Joker Run 4 Miler

Saturday was my first real race of the season.  I did run a winter series early in the year, but I was not running or training at the time, I kind of just showed up and ran slow.  I surprised myself a little bit because of my lack of speedwork preparation.  My goal was to finish in under 40 minutes, and I finished in 38:06.  I was thinking to myself that I would keep around a 10:00 min pace or a little faster.  I felt really good, so I settled in around 9:30.  I wanted to run at a comfortably hard pace and not kill myself.  Killing myself would be the equivalent of trying to PR a 5k.  You know, that miserable pace that you just want to die the whole time, lol.  Yeah, I didn't want to do that at all this race.  The last mile, I felt really good and had plenty of conserved energy, so I kicked it up and ran it in 9:10.  I was a little disappointed when I finished and saw my time because I knew that I had a lot more in me, but at the same time I was happy.  Now I know that I can push myself harder.  I was just worried I would push too hard at the beginning and then tire out halfway through.  I probably could've maintained a 9:15 pace and not killed myself.  At any rate, it is much better than the paces I ran during the Winter Series.  If I can get back to my 5k PR pace of 8:40 by June I will be very happy.  I think I can do it.  It was very cold for the race, around 35 degrees, and not that many people turned out....maybe 50.  There were only 3 people in my age group, and of course I got 3rd place, haha.

I stumbled upon this amazingly awesome website for tracking runs when I left a comment on a local runner's blog.  He's local, but pretty much a rockstar in the running circle, lol.  Actually, that would be an understatement.  His name is Jason Pyles and you can find him over at Running with Pyles if you want to see some pretty amazing runs.  The site he told me about is http://www.strands.com/.  It's so integrative and offers lots of analysis and charts, it's crazy!  Check out my profile and play around with the training charts.  I'm at www.strands.com/tammyrunswv.  Pretty cool!

Running stats:
Miles: 4
Time: 38:06
Ave pace: 9:30