This wasn't an all-out race for me. Instead I wanted to do it as a tempo run, bracketing it with a warmup and cooldown. My goal was 7:00/mile, so I held back at the beginning. I'm sure my heart rate was under 170 bpm for the first few miles, and the pace felt very comfortable. I was talking to other people, although they didn't like that. There were no mile markers (that I saw) until mile 4, so I had to guess at my pace.

When I reached the end of mile 4, I looked at my watch and saw that I my pace had been 6:14/mile. This was much faster than intended. The final mile was a little quicker, just because everyone speeds up then. I tried to hold my place and not let everyone who was racing hard pass me. I actually passed quite a few more people, because I had a lot left in my tank. The final mile was done in 6:06.

Since I didn't want to kill my legs I tried to avoid a kick at the finish. So, shortly before the finish I passed some people in my vicinity and built a little gap. No one was able to close that gap at the finish, so I didn't have to sprint to prevent a kick-down.

Amazingly, my "training run" was actually a PR for the distance, which really just indicates that I almost never run the 8K. My last race at this distance was in 2001 or 2002.



Nothing.

Right after I crossed the finish, I took off for another 1.5 miles of cooldown at 8:00 pace. My legs felt very good and I could have kept running longer. Then I just stretched and called it a good 7.5-mile workout.


My own restraint. In hindsight, I sort of wish I would have raced this, but I had decided to do it on a whim a few days beforehand and I didn't want to risk injury very early in the season.


Very well organized and fun. My only complaint is that they use poor quality ankle straps for the timing chips. The straps offer no protection from the edges of the chip, so by the end of the race my ankle had been chafed open and was bleeding everywhere. I would recommend wearing high-ankled socks to avoid this.