Fast day

[Today’s run: 5k race in Starkville]

I went over to Starkville this morning and ran in the 5k race, part of the Frostbite Half-Marathon (&10k &5k) event.

My last 5k was in the summer of 2017 (30:29). And before that in November of 2016 (30:26).

You may recall that I had some weight loss starting in late 2017, and I also did some track training last summer. I was thinking about running the same event in 2018 that I had run in 2017 to check my progress, but the schedule didn’t work out for me.

So, today I was hoping for a sub-30 minute result. My recent runs have been pretty good.

The 10k and 5k races started out at the same time and over the same course for the first few miles, probably almost 3 miles. We ran up the hill (west) on Main street, down a diagonal road to Scales/Gillespie Street, east on Gillespie to where it comes out on Russell, then north to University St and back west to Main and a run up to the finish line. The 10k people went East at University St and went who knows where.

I felt like I was moving aggressively during the whole run. On a scale of 0-10 with 0 being asleep and 10 being maximum run-for-your-life, I was trying to be in the 6-7 range and I think I kept it there. I used my arms well on the uphills.

So I saw the clock as I got close to the finish line and it was 27:xx something and I was just as happy as can be. I ended up finishing in 27:33. That was good for first in my age group (out of 5). A lot of the runners my age were out doing the half-marathon. But I will take it!