This was my first 5k in a while. First one since June I think. I'm not in great shape right now, and I took a break from running up until last week. So the past two weeks I've been running every day, starting out slowly with my mileage. I've run this race a few times, and I decided to take it out slowly. The first mile is a lot of uphill and pretty hard, so I didn't want to kill myself. I didn't know what the competition would be like, but I just wanted to go by feel for at least the first mile. The race started and I was surprised at how quickly some people started out. I was probably in 20th place a quarter mile in. I settled into a good pace and was in about 15th going up the hill. I kept the pace easy and relaxed. I passed a few people and was in about 12th place after the mile. My first mile (from my garmin) was 5:55. I picked it up a bit after the mile and passed a few people, about 1.5 in I picked it up even more. I was in about 5th place at this point. I passed third place during the second mile and set my eyes on the front two who were running together. My second mile was 5:30. The second mile was filled with rolling hills, uphill and downhill. I finally caught up to second place a little over two miles. At this point first place had pulled away from second by a few seconds. Second place stayed with me, but he fell back after a bit. I set my eyes on first and was gaining, but with around 3/4 of a mile he started to pick it up and I stopped gaining on him. I was able to close the gap to five seconds, but I couldn't gain anymore ground on him over the last half mile. He ended up around 16:53 and I was at 17:00. My last mile was 5:05. Overall I was pretty happy with this race. I wasn't expecting much because I just started training again, but I improved my time over 20 seconds on this course from the last time I ran it in 2007 after my senior cross country season. I also was happy because I ran a smart race, starting out conservatively and passing people throughout the race, not getting passed once. I even negative split very well, even though the last mile was the most downhill. Also, I was happy that I almost beat Dallin Taylor. He is on BYU's team, and he said he was just out of making the traveling team. I'm not nearly in my best shape, and I almost caught him at the end. I've been having some foot pain, but it feels pretty good after the race, and I didn't notice it during the race at all. I haven't been on the blog for a while, but I plan to start blogging again since my starting running again. I plan to start building my mileage starting from 35 this week. | 