This was the first race I ran in 06 after I started exercising again, so it had some symbolic meaning to me. I have gotten somewhat faster since then. One of my goals for this year is to complete a <22 minute 5K, so I kind of turned it up.

I started strong and felt good for the first mile or so, but I had weird kind of dizzy feeling start to kick in. This was kind of weird, as I've never had anything like this before. I was on pace for my goal, but I didn't want to pass out or anything, so I just tried to keep focus and ease up a little bit.

For the last mile, I was feeling like I didn't have much left in the tank. I always try to trick myself into competing when I feel spent...in this race they were only timing the first 50 men and women, so I kept telling myself that I was #51 and I better finish strong. I passed about 4 guys sprinting toward the finish and was bummed to check my watch and see my time was 22:03. This is a PR, and I'm not really that upset, but, you know, I didn't hit the mark I was after. I also felt like my head was about to explode.

I checked the results in the evening and saw that I was #42 among the men... so any disappointment I had about not hitting my time was gone. I was thrilled--there were, I think, over 3500 competitive runners. So, yeah. I feel pretty good about this race.

I still have a lot of work to do with pacing so I can have more than one 7 minute mile in a race.

Drank lots of water, grabbed some freebie food to take home to the kids.


Great race. I love the family groups and survivors...reminds me how unimportant things like my 5K time are.