"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great" - Steve Prefontaine I saw this quote last month on someone else's blog and it just stuck with me. I would find it popping in my head randomly. I just knew I could apply this thinking to my race today. My goal was to break 20:00, which would need to be a 32 second PR. And if it did not happen I knew I would have at least given it my best shot. So this story starts on Friday night. I had to work until Midnight. After getting home it usually takes a little while for me to settle down before going to bed. I laid down at 1am and fell asleep pretty quick. But at 1:30am I woke up coughing a lot. I took some cough syrup and tried to fall asleep again. After another 10-15 minutes of coughing I decided to sleep on the reclining couch. I sat upright and that seemed to stop all the drainage from my sinuses that were causing the coughs. Woke up again around 5am and laid down. The alarm went off at 6:40am. After getting ready John came over and then we picked up C.B. Now we had an 80 mile drive to the race. Thankfully it was a 10:30am start time. No problems traveling there. The weather was great. Sunny, light wind, and 55-60 degrees. The course was completely flat. It was a paved path that followed along a river. It was out and back. I spoke to someone before the race and he said the course had been measured with a wheel and was right at 3.1. Also he said they followed good tangents so try to run smart so as to not add any extra distance. The race started on the narrow path. I was about 2 or 3 deep from the starting line. There was some slight jostling for position at first, but it spread out pretty good by the end of the first 1/4 mile. I would say no one passed me from the from about the .4 mark. I gradually picked off a few people by the end of the race. But mostly I was running on my own, but still close enough to hear some people behind me. I had a difficult time measuring my effort. It is much different running in a pack than training on my own. I really thought breaking 20 was going to be a bust until I heard my 1st mile split. It was a 6:29. Well, I thought, I still got a chance at this if I can just go a little faster. Mile 2 was 6:19. That was a relief to hear. Now I just knew I had to maintain my current pace and the 20:00 barrier would be broken. 3rd mile was in 6:24. My watch measured 3.07. So either I hit better tangents, or the GPS lost signal in the heavy tree lined path. The last bit was in 23.60. So the final time was 19:36.62 I was very happy with my time. Especially considering how poorly my workouts were during the middle part of this past week. Not sure what was wrong with me then, but everything was a GO today. At the end of it all I found out I won my age division. No prizes though. And I got chicked. The 1st place female finished 2 seconds in front of me. John and C.B. set PR's today, but I do not know their times. Race - 1 mile - 6:29.02 2 mile - 6:19.88 3 mile - 6:24.12 the rest - 23.60 Total - 19:36.62 - 6:19 avg.
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