August 25, Sunday

The feeling is back!

Today was the annual Jason Memorial 5K run at Hillsboro. I entered this year with some apprehension because I was not very happy with the consistency of my training this summer. I’ve mentioned in earlier posts that I have been less motivated to get out on a daily basis since returning from the Senior Nationals.  I entered today’s run with two basic goals. The first was to not exceed 30 minutes. The second was to attempt to run a negative race; that is to finish stronger in the third mile than in the first mile.  It has been difficult to have confidence in my aerobic fitness given the large number of days I have not run for the last 2 months. So I approached the line with some trepidation today, but was relaxed because of my limited goals.

The race-

I was very comfortable running just below 9:00 pace for the first mile. During the second mile I tried to sustain the same pace.  The split times were 9:01 and 9:06.  I was quite surprised at how comfortable all of that was. I made a conscious effort to try and increase patience during the third mile. My watch was telling me that I was running somewhere in the 8:30 range.  So, I finished feeling pretty frisky and not too drained by the race at all.

The final 5K time worked out be 27:31.  🙂

The third mile time was 8:30.    🙂   🙂

So, both of my goals were achieved.   🙂   🙂   🙂

This performance restored confidence in my ability to run a competitive 5K in the future.

With my renewed enthusiasm I’m sure that I will be much more focus on stats in the upcoming days. Right now I will just say things are stable.