You've got to want it to win it

Race day!  Elden woke me up 2 minutes before my first alarm, and there's no snooze button on a baby so I had to get up.  But it was good so I could get up and moving and ready to go for the race.  We arrived at the course around 6:30.  Find out the "official start time" is 7:10 instead of 7, so a little relieved to have an extra 10 minutes warmup.  I did about 2 miles warmup and then strides and drills.  As I lined up at the start I noticed some high school boys and thought they might be good to pace with.  And another girl who also hopped in at the start closer to the race time.  My goal was to do sub 18 pace (which would need to be a really good day, but I did sub 18 my first race back from having Ellie... even though my miles were higher then.  I had at least done some speed before this one though).  When the race went out, I had guessed right on who would be going out quick from the high school kids.  I didn't go out super hard as I didn't want to crash and burn (though it's just 3 miles, what was I thinking? I was thinking it would be a long 3 miles if I went out too hard. I forgot how fast it goes when you're racing).  There were 2 girls ahead of me, but I told myself they would come back to me.  And one of them did about 3/4 of a mile in.  But one didn't, so while I decided I would just use the time to close the gap, that didn't happen.  For a little while I was running next to a guy and it seemed like the gap may have been shrinking, but after a while he took off and I didn't go with.  My first mile was in the 5:40s.  After Tuesday's track workout, it seemed reasonable.  But the girl up ahead had gone through in about 5:30.  It seemed the rest of the time I was just watching the gap get bigger and bigger.  I kept telling myself the gap would close eventually, but nope.  And in my mind I was making up excuses, "I've got an 8 month old baby.  I only run 2-4 days a week most weeks.  I only got a 2 hour and a 3 hour stretch of sleep last night"  But I had to tell myself to stop it.  After I had Ellie and was training and racing cross country, I had to tell myself many times that despite what the sports nutrition team would say about sleep and performance, my performance wasn't dependent on how much sleep I got.  My mile 2 split was around 12:20.  I had slowed down a lot.  My finishing time was 19:18 (on my watch) 19:19 according to the race results.  The winning time was 17:50.  I lost the race in the beginning when I let that girl go and assumed I'd catch up.  Big mistake.  I recognize that 2nd place is still an accomplishment.  But I am still disappointed that when it was time to go for my goal, I wasn't ready to work for it.  For a 5k I had conserved too much and didn't lay enough out there.  From this point I think I need to choose another race and work on my efforts.  I would love to run a half marathon, which means I need to be more consistent with my runs and overall mileage.  I will be done with my class at the U next week, which will be nice.  Two races I am looking at are the Ogden half marathon in May or the Utah Valley half marathon in June.  Part of me wants to do Ogden since it is sooner, but another part of me is saying wait until June to give myself more time to get ready.  I could also find another 5k or maybe a 10k in between to lead up to it.  Even though today's race didn't go as I wanted it to (because I didn't want to work hard enough when the moment arrived), it still makes a decent workout for leading up to something longer.  At the pace I was going I felt I could keep going for a little bit, though my endurance is nowhere near that for a half marathon yet.  Next week (or after I finish my schoolwork) I'll take a look at some races coming up and make a plan from there.