I was vacillating this morning on whether to go with shorts or tights – shorts won out, but I had to make sure I stayed warm. Did a warm-up run of about 1 mile, and some stretching, just to keep moving. Ran back to the car (only 2 blocks away) to ditch the fleece, and some strides to make sure all the kinks were out. I was feeling surprisingly good.
We started out, and I felt like I was moving slow. I drifted somewhere behind Craig and ran near some other people, but not close enough to form a group of any kind, more like a line with small gaps. But that was good enough for me; better than the usual result of losing people quickly.
Mile 1 went by in 6:04 – and I still felt like I was moving slow. I was feeling good, and that was more important to me than the time (which was very nice). Mile 2 slowed a little bit, to 6:24. “Ugh!” I thought, “here we go again”. I was anticipating another quick start with gradual fade.
I then decided I had to stay in close contact with the guy in front of me. I got close enough that he could hear me breathing, and he promptly sped up. Mile 3 in 6:07, for an 18:35 finish.
Like Craig, I first thought this was a 5K, and was unbelievably stoked to set a PR by 45 seconds! But then my reality check came when I realized theee was no way I could have run that time at my pace. Damn those pesky laws of physics! A little online race pace calculator did show that my average speed would have gotten me to a 19:14 for 5K, which would have been a PR by 6 seconds!
I’m very hapy with this result. I hope I can put it to good use tomorrow for the Ben Franklin Bridge run.