Wasn't real sure how I would do in this race. My runs over the past several weeks have been at a faster pace/lower HR than at any time in the past, the weather was surprisingly "cool" for this time of year due to some thunderstorms the night before the race, so I was hoping I could get close to my PR of 22:47. I figured I would run around 7:20 pace the first 2 miles and see what happened the last mile. I ran the first mile at a hard but controlled pace and hit Mile 1 at 6:58. Had a brief moment of panic. I have only run a sub-7 first mile on one other occasion, with disastrous consequences. I backed off a little bit on the second mile, then ran as hard as I thought I could the last mile. Beat my previous PR by 30 seconds. I probably could have pushed harder on the second mile. My average HR is normally around 190 for a 5k, but I only averaged 180 today. I probably held back a little too much on the second mile out of fear of blowing up on the last mile, like I did the last time I ran a sub-7 first mile. Overall, it was a good race.

Not much. It's amazing what a small amount of consistent training can do for you. I still have a lot of room for improvement. I averaged less than 15 mpw in the previous 5 months, but I was more consistent than I have been in the past. I need to continue building my volume and start adding in some tempo and speed work over the next couple of months.

At some orange slices, walked around a little bit.


Just need to run more, but I'm being real conservative with building my volume. I've discovered that my body needs a lot of time to adapt to new training loads. The 10% rule is too aggressive for me, so I need to continue to be patient. But I'm happy with where I am at this point.