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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

New Year's Resolution Realized

One of my 3 New Year's Resolutions set at the beginning of 2009 was to break 32 minutes in the 5K. Note that I went into this year with a PR of 35 1/2. So I was really challenging myself to take 3 1/2 minutes off just a 3.1 mile course - not an easy task.

Tonight the weather was great. The cold front had come through, and it was in the low 60s. A nice change from my 87 degree, very muggy run the night before. This was my third day in a row to run. Note that I very very rarely run two days in a row. And so that means I never run 3 days in a row. And last night was a speed workout right before the lightning show that a thunderstorm brought with it.

I stayed strong through the run and while I got nervous throughout mile 2, I started saying to myself all through mile 3 that I thought I could at least get closer than I had all summer to that 32 minute goal, so I decided to go for it to get to that glorious total of 3.1.

I had switched again from the time screen to the screen that had distance so would not see my final time the second I finished. I saw 3.10 come up and I hit the start/stop button - the "Timer Stopped" note came up and I slammed to a stop, thought I was dying. I started walking back to the house and I flipped my Garmin GPS one screen over where Time was one of the displayed items. It said "32:00". What?!? I laughed... loudly... in the dark.... in the middle of a bunch of neighbors' houses... for about 2 minutes. And then I cried for about 20 seconds.

When I walked through the door, I showed my husband the time screen first, and then showed him the distance screen. He was so happy for me. We grabbed the camera to take a picture. I don't care if it was a PR or a goal achieved in a race or on a training run - it counts either way because IT HAPPENED. I think it's more awesome that it happened without a finish line, without a physical destination, that's harder mentally in my book, because I'm typically less motivated.



Splits:
Mile 1 - 10:16
Mile 2 - 10:25
Mile 3 - 10:22
Last 0.1 - 9:40 pace

A 10:20 average, 32 minutes for a 5K distance! Today was a GREAT running day!

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations!! It is a lot harder to do this on your own that in a race!

    ReplyDelete