8k PR

As you have read, I'm trying something new this time for my half marathon training. This go around, we are training for time. This involves speed work, something I have done very little of until now. Surprisingly, the training has made us faster. (Duh?!?!)

Today was my first race to actually race. You either run a race or you race it. This is a common question you can ask a runner before a race: "Are you running or racing?" Before now, I would just run to finish and keep my pace pretty comfortable. I would cross the finish hardly breathing hard. Well, that can't be the case anymore. We are bumping it up a notch. Today was that opportunity.

I got to the race early enough to watch the 5k start. Then my running partner and "Coach" ran a very slow mile to warm up and get our legs ready to move. Karen and I laughed again about being "those people" now as we saw a few others doing the same and the participants waiting on the 8k glaring like "Why are they running NOW?"

We had a game plan to start slower and speed up as we went and then open it up full speed ahead the final mile. Well, it didn't go exactly as planned. I think we started too fast because we slowed down at mile 3 and mile 4 was horribly slow. However, we opened it up for the final mile. That was so stinkin' hard! Luckily, "Coach" ran the last quarter mile or so in with us pushing us to the end. The moment I crossed the finish my watch said 7:00 minute/mile pace. WOW!

Today's race was a personal record (PR) for me, which is good. However, it was a little humid. I hope that means we would be faster minus humidity. Nonetheless, I finished in 48:20. I need to get down to a solid and comfortable 9:00/mile. Working towards that. Here are my splits for the race today:

Mile 1: 9:16

Mile 2: 9:26

Mile 3: 10:00

Mile 4: 10:49 (Eek! VERY bad)

Mile 5: 8:45

Now, I need to add Tempo runs to my weeks. I think I'm going to kick hills to the curb and swap that out for tempo. This training thing is a part-time job!