Notes
Jingle Jog 5k. This was a rough race. I never really got excited for this. Was just planning to go out hard and see how well I held on. For being a fun event that gave you a lot of stuff, the course was terrible! No mile markers were marked and the course criss crosses itself 3 times, so you have to weave around slower runners. Felt like I was in oxygen debt 400 in, definitely started hurting the back half, but the last mile felt forever. I kind of had a hunch the course was long after that last mile. I still won but felt terrible doing it and was really down after the race because the time was so lousy. I need to get back to doing threshold runs.
After my cool down and waiting for the awards, a couple came up to me and asked how long I had run. I said 3.1 and they said someone GPS'd the course to be 3.4 miles because we had apparently all missed a turn. I knew that couldn't be true based on pace. When I looked over the map again, I noticed that we had gone about 1 block past a turn marked on the map. There was a fairly large hill we were running up and we blew right through orange cones (we had a Ford Mustang as our guide). Every other point on the course, orange cones meant a turn but not this time. We turned another block later at the top of the hill. If you map that course for no tangents, it's 3.32 miles long, so I would imagine roughly 3.25 miles with tangents. Even the marked course, mapped out with no tangents is 3.21 miles so no matter what the course was long. Made me feel a little bit better about my time, but still have some things to work on if I plan on running a track 5k in 2 months.