29:25 8K!!!!

Wow — wouldn’t have guessed I could run sub 29:30, at all!

I made a bet with Nate the night before: 15 minutes massage if I ran sub 30:00. His personal best is a 30:04, and my personal best before today was a 30:34. So, 29:59 seemed like a reasonable goal.

My legs didn’t feel springy during the warm up — the last week wasn’t exactly a recovery week (on purpose). I let myself ease up a little bit (only 4 miles the day before), just so I could see where I was at. Wednesday this week was a track workout, Friday a 3 mile threshold, and then Sunday a race. Considering all of that and how my legs felt during the warmup, my goal was still 30:00.

Gun goes off. First mile, 6:00. That’s one of my greatest strengths: having a goal and running to meet it: I’m a patient racer, know how to pace consistently, and am a really good negative-splitter. But, the downside to that is if you’re capable of doing faster, you never really get there if you’re racing consistently and patiently like I do. Lucky for me, one of my Run N Fun teammates was near me & picked it up the 2nd mile. I decided to go with her. SOO thankful for that push! Otherwise, like I said, I would have run my 30:00. 5:50 second mile. She dropped back during the 3rd mile, but I kept up the charge. My lungs felt strong! 5:51 3rd mile. I was catching women pretty quickly, which is a lot of fun. The last 2 miles hurt a little bit — not the lungs (how did they get so strong??), but my legs felt like they’d collapse — like they weren’t contracting quite right. Why is that? I’ve felt that before.

Last two miles were in 6:00 and 5:41. Oops on that 4th mile. But, I still pulled off a 29:25 8K! Yeah!!! It isn’t often that I’m completely satisfied with a race, and proud of how I’ve done. This is one of those rare occasions 🙂 I was the 6th woman overall, behind some very fast metro runners. Just 1 second behind Erin Ward, who I consider to be very fast (has made it to the trials at least once, if not twice?) If I can keep myself healthy & injury free, this race shows that I could go on to race pretty fast this spring! Now, just need to work on that healthy & injury free thing!