Upset at the Turkey Trot

i had 4 miles scheduled yesterday. i went into our southside clinic to change clothes and there was a client waiting there for the on call vet. i told her to come inside and i would take care of her. i called the vet to tell him i was taking care of this emergency and he told me there was another, very critical emergency on the way and he was working on a horse out at a farm. the other emergency came in and i started working on them both when he got to the clinic. we worked on the cases until 10:45pm. i did not run. didn't bother me much because i did not have a run on the schedule for today, but emily had signed us up for a 5k.

we ran the 5k in mt. juliet. i was hoping to get a pr and finish under 27 minutes. i thought that was pretty reasonable with my recent times, but i did not know what the course was like. it was slightly hilly, not a great course for a pr for a 5k. it was timed on gun time and i started a little ways back in the pack. from the time i crossed the start line, mile 1 was 8.31 and i was feeling pretty good but figured i better slow down just a little. mile 2 was 8.53, that put me at 17.24. i knew i could finish the rest of the race in 9.30, no problem. i did not have my gps so i was gauging speed by the pack i was running with and by my exerted effort. i did not push really hard since i was passing people and i knew i could run 1.1 miles in the needed time. with about .2 miles to go i looked at my watch and saw i only had 1.30 to finish under 27 minutes. i was really mad at myself for not paying more attention, not that i really had much to go by, i guess my pack had slowed down as well. my self timed last 1.1 miles was 10.03 for a total of 27.27 (official gun time was 27.37). so i did finish at under a 9 min/mile pace and set a pr, but i know i could have finished under 27 min.

the email the race sent out said there were over 1000 runners. however, after adding up all the published times i only got 733 runners. i finished 13/35 in my male age group, 99/317 males and 137/733 total runners. not too bad. the overall winner was in my age group and finished in 16.45, ouch...one day...one day.

emily did well and finished in front of around 13 other runners in her age group. she said she finished this race 5 minutes faster than her last 5k, which was the houston county 5k, that is a pretty flat course. if she ever starts running with me regularly, i might really be the slowest person in our family of runners.

thought of the day: if you have a goal stay observant or you might screw yourself out of reaching your goal.