This race was snowed/iced out on Feb Valentines day weekend. And they rescheduled it to today. It is a pretty fast course, so I didn't want to miss it. There was talk about going on a vacation trip this weekend, but I'm glad that fizzled out and I was able to do it. It is defenitely a PR course in the past. Going into this race I haven't done any 5K pace running, which is a big gap in my training that I need to fix. But I felt good coming into the race, more or less. The warm-up was long enough and felt ok. The plan was to go out by feel. In a short race I generally go out on a faster pace and then try to hang on. I figure I'll hurt at the end no matter how conservatively I take the first mile. Mile one was right at 5:30, which was good. Now I had to concentrate on hanging on and trying to maintain a pace I could keep up. 2nd mile is pretty flat but somehow last year I slowed a bit. I did it last year and did it this year again. I think I get scared of the pace and how long I can hold it. But I passed a couple guys and gained on a couple others. Mile 2 came in at 11:15 for a 5:45 mile. 3rd mile has a medium size up and a nice slightly downhill last half mile. It is a matter of making it through the hill without totally blowing up. I wanted to stop several times in the last two miles...I was getting close to redlining it. I crested the hill and really wanted to throw it into my final gear, but there wasn't much to be had. I tried my best. One dude passed me but other than that I maintained my gaps to the others in front. I rolled in at 17:31. A new 5K PR!
So it is a new PR and I am very happy with that. It is 12 or 13 seconds faster than this race last year (and it was run in 40-50 deg weather - which I think is worth 10 seconds vs this heat and humidity) But isn't as fast as I'd like to be. I need to work harder on my speed work.
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