Monday, March 05, 2012

2012 Mardi Gras Madness 5K

For my second race of the year, I found one here in town.  It's nice when I don't have to drive all over creation.  There was a 5K this last weekend.  It was themed around Mardi Gras, which was a couple weeks ago.

We started from a shopping area's parking lot and ran a couple blocks, crossed a major street on a bridge, went through part of a park, and then headed out on the trails in town until we hit the turn around and did it all over again.

I was really hoping I could finish this race in under half an hour.  That's been a goal for a couple of months now, and I thought maybe I could do it.  Fortunately, I had my new watch to help me, because I think that's the only reason I made it.

I started out strong, like I often do on a race.  In fact, I was too strong trying to keep up with people in front of me.  So I slowed it down.  I was trying to stay in a sweet spot of 9:30, but only slow down to that if I felt tired.

I was actually feeling pretty good about the half way point.  Even at two miles, it wasn't so bad.  I'd check my watch and see my pace had slowed, so I'd speed up a little, but for the most part I was doing okay pace wise.

Then I hit that last half mile.  I seriously thought if I kept it up I would be sick.  But I was so close I could feel it, so I kept pushing, and it paid off.

Official results aren't out yet, but I finished somewhere between 29:07 (what I saw when I crossed the finish line) and 29:25 (what my watch said when I finally hit stop after exciting the chute).  So I'm calling in 29:15.

I DID IT!!!!!

I don't know if it is reasonable to expect myself to get much faster, but I'm going to keep running and see what happens.

Meantime, I now have my sites set on my next goal, a sub-hour 10K.  According to these results, I should be able to do it, but I was so wiped at the end, I'm just not sure.  I think I'm going to try on June 2nd, so I'll have some time to train between now and then plus I will be adding lots more miles.  We'll just have to see how it goes.

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