The Awesomesauce

...is that I broke my official course PR on my "hometown" 5k course. By 0:40. Yes. I know. It's awesome.

So, I decided to do this because I was tired of it hanging over my head. My previous (official) PR on that course was 42:28. Part of that was because I freaked out because I had gone out quicker than usual and wasn't really feeling it, aside from some calf stiffness that I was used to at the time (it was a shoe problem). At that time, I don't think it was as good as I had done before, but it was pretty close. I don't even remember what it was before that. (Do you ever forget old race times? It's been a year since I did that and it was never posted anywhere; I just remember...)

So, yesterday, I made a decision to break PR today. Not a goal, not a hope - a decision. What made me do that? I don't know. Somehow, I knew if I tried really, really hard - I could. So, I got myself ready. I figured out my splits, I told people what I was going to do (accountability) and geared up.

I woke up this morning and my ankle was hurting a bit. I was tired. I didn't feel that great because I had eating waaaaaay too much for dinner last night. Around 9:00 my brother knocked on my door and said that I should get up (in the nicest of terms) for getting ready to run. I debated with myself for 15 minutes about whether or not I should do it. I finally got up and was starting to put on my everyday clothes when I thought: "You know what, why not? My ankle thing doesn't really do any worse if I run; it has a range of "good" and "bad" that's not going to change if I try to PR today, this morning!" Also, I didn't want to tell my brother again (I do this a lot) "Let's wait until later..."

So I went. My planned splits were 14:00, 13:00, 12:00, and at most 2:00 for the last 0.1 (really 0.19 on this course).

Break Down:

Lunge Matrix Warm Up

Mile 1: 13:24
2: 12:35
3: 13:42
last .19: 2:06 @ 11:18 pace

Total: 41:48

Just about perfectly what I wanted, although towards the end I was thinking: "Anything less than 42:28, even if it's by just a second! Just keep going!" And I did. It was AWESOMESAUCE, as I promised before.

R. ran the last 0.6 mile with me. He also PR'd in the same distance, same course by 58 seconds. I was quite proud of him, especially since he thought it would be quite difficult for him to get even a few seconds off that time.

So yay! I'm going to be doing this exercize (hehehe) once a week during marathon training until it gets too hard, or I'm not noticing results. But it was fun, and it showed me what I really can do, no matter what.

I think it also helped that I just kept my concentration on that one goal of PR'ing.  I'm so happy!

Happy Running!