Last year I did this race and absolutely loved it.  It’s cheap ($15), you get to wait in the Fire Station with a real bathroom, the course is flat through residential streets and when it’s all over, you get a free hot breakfast at a restaurant across from the finish line.  Mucho Perks!

Conditions today were absolutely perfect, sunny and 39 degrees, not a trace of wind.  I did a little less than a mile warmup and had a moment of pre-race worry because the strides I included were slower than normal and seemed hard.  But I finally realized today that this is my pattern, it’s that way before all my races, so no sense in worrying about it again.

As far as goals go, I had secretly been thinking 22:30 for a dream goal, 22:40 would be wonderful and 22:55 would leave me satisfied happy.  All I wanted was to get out of the 23′s.

My time today? 22:14!  2nd place in my AG (lol, always the bridesmaid, never the bride).  That’s a 52-second PR from April and a 1:16 improvement over last year.  What a huge relief because I’ve secretly worried that my times had begun to stagnate some.  False alarm.

I’m not posting splits because my Garmin wasn’t in line with the race and I forgot to turn it off at the end (when will I learn?), so I was really running on effort, not the watch.  How lovely to find my mechanical crutch is playing a smaller and smaller role in my running.

Mentally, a big help was that Brain Training For Runners book I got.  There’s a section in it that talks about pain and being afraid of pain.  It gives you a few methods to deal with it and the one I used today was deciding to go into the race looking for pain, knowing it would come and seeing how far I could take it.  Wouldn’t you know, it ended up being one of the less painful races I’ve run.

And that’s it from Race Central.  Time to take a shower and become my alter ego, Sloth Girl.  Have a great weekend folks, may your runs be fast, fun and fabulous.

12 Responses to “2nd Annual Haddon Township 5K Turkey Trot”