Notes
Here's my supplemental notes to the text message this morning. Warm up went really well and I felt really good at race time. Course map I got was accurate but it was small. So I got a surprise at the starting lin -- the race was running the opposite direction than I had assumed. Not a big problem as it turned out. Wind out of the southwest was moderate, but gusty so paces going south and west were definitely affected. Ran this entire race mostly by feel and really checked my time only at the 1 mile and 2 mile clocks. First mile was really strong although I was surprised when the mile 1 showed 8:08. Effort was very steady for mile 2 and the slight drop off in pace mostly due to varying course conditions and not any drop off in effort. As I indicated, mile 3 was tough. Battled with some discomfort throughout the mile, but just kept in the moment focusing on making it to the next turn so effort remained solid to the finish. Looking at the more detailed break down on Garmin Connect, I actually ran this mile better than I thought. The pace did drop between 2 and 2.6 miles, but the effort remained hard & I did pick up the pace in the last half mile, including a final tenth which was on some pretty tall grass & not the greatest surface for a hard closing kick. The course was slightly long & the race was not chip timed so finishing time was somewhere between 26:15 and 26:18 for the 3.14 miles, which translates to a 5k time range between 25:59 to 26:04 = right at or little under my 5k PR. The race definitely matched where I've been training the last month.