I don't have official results yet, but I know for sure that I ran a new personal record yesterday. According to my Garmin, I did it in about 28:20, which is just slightly faster than I had anticipated and hoped. I would have been happy with 29:00, so I'm pretty excited to have beaten that by 40 seconds, or about 12 seconds per mile.
It was a fun race with lots of people that seemed genuinely excited to be there. It was set right along the river's edge in Chattanooga, TN. This provided a nice backdrop for a portion of the run. Other parts were along a sidewalk next to a busy street...not such a pretty backdrop. My strategy was to start out fast and slow into a more comfortable pace after the first few hundred feet. I started near the front because I didn't want to have to weave my way through the walkers and got a little caught up in the fast pace of the race leaders for the first quarter mile or so. I realized I was running too fast and tried to slow my pace a little, but not too much because I really wanted to see what I could push myself to do. I kept a pretty fast pace (for me) for the first mile. I checked my time when the Garmin beeped and found that I had completed the first mile in 8:49. Wow! I knew that I wouldn't be able to maintain that pace for the full 5K so I made a conscious effort to slow down. The next mile came and went pretty easily. A little fatigued was starting to set in but nothing too bad. The second mile was completed in 9:18. I knew I could do another mile at this pace so I maintained that for a bit before trying to pick up the pace to the end. That never really happened as I finished mile 3 in 9:15, only 3 seconds faster than mile 2. Still not bad considering how hard I had pushed the first mile. Overall it was a good run. I'm looking forward to the next one near the end of April.
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