Sudden 10K, 5K, 10K no 5K

Serious tweaking going on. Stephanie said for me to go race this morning, so I hopped in the car and headed to the 2010 Purity Moosic City 5K/10K in Nashville. On the way, I could not decide which race to run. Looking at last years results, I decided I had a slight chance to place in my age group running the 5K, but my training was telling me 10K. When you read the last part of that sentence, it should plainly read - NO SPEED WORK, only some 800M/1000M Fartlek, about 3 weeks ago.

I've been nursing a sore hamstring for the past 2 weeks, and have slowed my pace way down, and run the same SLOW pace for 2 weeks. Yesterday, I got back to marathon speed, but knew deep down that it wouldn't be good enough for a good race. Finally, I got to the race, and decided that the 5K would be good enough. Here is my reason. I want to do a long run on Sunday morning, and didn't want to be too tired from a 10K.(insert corny face with bulging eyes here)

Long story gets shortened here. All the fast folks must have seen the same results as I saw from last year, and decided to run this race. Luckily, half of them ran the 10K, but the other half ran the 5K. It was a perfect morning and a super flat, fast course, but I just could not maintain my first mile speed of 6:50, and hit mile 2/3 at 7:28, which is more or less my 10K speed.

Finished at 22:43, which was good enough for 9th in my Age Group. WOW. Bottom line is that I am still new at this, and the marathon training is still new to me. This time last year, I would have been absolutely thrilled with a 22:xx 5K.

Right now, it feels like I'm standing still, like in the picture above.  (I don't recall stopping and posing for that. I do remember, half smiling and thinking, OMG - she's about to take my ........ )

Next up is the CMM in 2 weeks.