World Wide Festival of Races

I ran the World Wide Festival of Races today.  If you're interested, I think you can still sign up and run your selected distance anywhere, anytime that fits your schedule.  It's free, too.  This blog posting is my formal "race report," so if you're interested in reading more about how I'm doing with coping with the news of being diagnoised with breast cancer, check out the other postings.  This one is purely running.

I ran the 5K distance since I haven't been very good about training for the past . . . well, year, probably.  Most weeks I've run at least once.  Rarely have I run more than twice a week since my Oct 2008 half marathon.  I've gotten back into it the past couple weeks though and am running 3 or 4 days a week now.

Ken took the kids to swim practice while I ran around our neighborhood, using my usual 1 mile loop.  It was an absolutely beautiful day!  It was mid-50's and sunny with little wind.  The course is mostly flat, but a few hills, including a .3 mile slow climb which is annoying for me in my current shape.  There's a great .1 mile down hill in one section. 

I went out way too fast and I know better.  I'm still a new runner, but after 3-4 years, I really do know better.  The first mile was 9:53 which is really fast for me.  The second mile was 10:08 which surprises me because I really felt like I slowed down and was struggling.  The last mile was 10:01.  I finished in 30:59 and was very wasted.  Was tough to finish even the last .1, I thought, "Three miles is good enough isn't it?  Do I really have to do the .1?"  But of course, I decided that yes, I did need to keep churning.

My personal best 5K was under 30 minutes (the Race for the Cure in 2007), but I really trained for that race for several months and worked hard on speed work to make that goal.  My long runs at that time were 6-8 miles.  Currently, 3 miles is my long run.  So, I was very happy with my time today.