Notes
Back in the saddle again.
Goals for the race (1) have fun, (2) negative splits, and (3) solid effort.
Mile 1 - 8:14
Mile 2 - 8:02
Mile 3 - 8:04
Mile 0.1 - 0:48
Total Time - 25:09 - (25:32 gun time)
It was a lot of fun getting back into the environment of a road race. Packet pick-up, pinning a number, the smell of a new race t-shirt, the buzz of a gathering crowd all had been missed. It was a bitterly cold morning but I was prepared and the weather wasn't much of a factor. In fact, the weather added something to the day. Another event that increased the fun factor was calling Jack at 8:53am, waking him up, and him still getting to the zoo in time to register for the 9:30am start. All in all a very fun morning.
Even though the second mile was 12 seconds faster than the first, most of that is explained with the slowness of running through all the traffic. Jack and I started way too far back and it took most of the first mile to get in a comfortable pace. Basically, all three miles were run in even splits so the negative aspect was clearly not accomplished.
The time, although mostly irrelevant, was pretty disappointing. I had no idea that an eight minute pace would feel so quick or be such an effort. It felt like a decent tempo run which is exactly what I wanted but I was thinking the resulting time would be below 23 minutes. Oh well, journey of a thousand miles.....line in the sand....benchmark......baseline......insert any other cliches. I feel comfortable that it was a solid effort and that was the goal.
So it's back to base building for the next two months. Next race is a 5K in March which will kick off my half-marathon training.