Same Stuff Different Day!!

So I finally got the opportunity to get back to the pavement. I had a 5k race/run on Superbowl Sunday. A perfect way to kick off the day my favorite team was to destroy the team that had no bizness in the Super Bowl anyways. I cant remember my last "fast" race. Really, this was to test my fitness, since I only been running like 20 miles / week MAX since my marathon in October. This winter has been HORRIBLE. Snow snow snow... cold cold cold. Havent gotten any true speed work. Gotta lose these 10lbs I gained. Trying to get down to 185 for my next marathon (yes I signed up for a April mary... I mean marathon).

There was probably close to 1000 runners. I made sure I got near the front. I heard some lady say "I think I'm going to run 24 minutes..." I was like WHAT???? Why was she near the front? All she was good for was to slow people down and get in the way. The temp was perfect... it was a heat wave that day... 35 degrees!! So the roads were wet and a little slick, but nothing extraordinary. The start was OK. There were a lot of turns to go thru. If you make too sharp a turn, then u slip on a snowbank... too wide and you slip on the paint on the pavement (its funny how slippery those things are when wet).

I felt soooo good for the first mile, it was like nothing at all. The second mile was easy also, but I had to put a little bit more effort. But that last mile!! We had to do a 360 turn, then it was net uphill. Seemed like the hill would never end. Thats what got me. I slowed to a tortoise pace. So at the top of the hill is the finish in like .2 miles. It usually takes me like .3 - .5 miles to totally recover from such a hill, but it was just "gut it out" time. The finish came without incident. My time was 21:36... a 6:57 / mile average. I guess it was ok, for a first race. My splits were...
Mile 1 6:28
Mile 2 6:48
Mile 3 7:31
Last Part 7:16 pace... 48 seconds

Those were Garmin times. So it looks like I need to work on my endurance a lil more. But with another heat wave coming with temps in the 40's, I'm getting all the speedwork in that I can!!! And I run on...