First race of the year today. The Strider Winter Series 5k. My goal today was 7 minute miles. I came in just over that with a split of 7:06. I had not run this course before. As I was standing around at the start I heard other people mention how much they hated this course. When the race director made the announcements at the first of the race he said that it was a "5k that felt like a 10k." The course had a good uphill from mile 1 to 1.5, followed by a good down, then a smaller second uphill. After that, it was mostly downhill to the finish. I thought the course was great, but I like hills. As I turned into the parking lot near the finish I thought "that was easy." It's not that I could have run it faster but the races I am use to running are longer. This race has set the precedence for my next 5 races. My goal is to train hard between each of the series races and keep my pace the same as the distance increases. Which means my goal time for Striders 10k on Feb 21 will be 44:12. If I can stick to my training schedule, I will run the Ogden Marathon with a time of 3:06. After the race I took my family to Denny's for breakfast. Then we went to the Treehouse Museum. It a children's hands-on discovery center. The kids loved it. When we got home I put my running shoes back on and went out for a long run. I was only planning on going 9 miles, but I was feeling good and ended up doing 10.5. I was running along a muddy jeep road for part of my course. There a family out for a ride in one of those oversized four wheelers (rhino or something). They were just ahead of me when I got on the road and hadn't seen me. I would about catch up with them, then they would go a little faster and get ahead again. this went on for about a half a mile, then they stopped. I ran past them, said "hello" and the Mom jumped and said "Oh, you scared me". They must have been stopped for a while, because I didn't see them again after that. Altogether, it was a great day of running.
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