AWESOME race!! I haven't done a 5K that fast since high school (many, many years ago. . .)!!! I had 2 goals today - I wanted to get in 24 minutes, and I wanted to beat a certain friend of mine. Goals accomplished!! I think the results showed my time as an average 7:50 min/ mile? I could be wrong, but wow, I pushed it! My first 2 miles were 7:40's and 7:50's. Forgot to push stop on my watch as I crossed the finish line, guess catching my breath was more important at the moment :) This is a great course. There are some uphills and downhills, but thankfully, the last half mile is all downhill. Unfortunately, I got one of those KILLER side aches at this point - you know, the one's that literally take your breath away? I had to slow down just slightly, but I refused to slow down too much, my goal was in sight! Got passed by 2 younger girls toward the end, and sped up to keep up with them, but they still took me at the end. The other best part?? I placed 3rd in my age division! Which, considering it's 30-39, it's quite the big division, and I was quite pleased! But, it got better! The two girls ahead of me in my division placed in the top 3 females overall, so when they did the age division awards, the race directors had decided if you placed overall, you weren't going to also get the prize for the age group. Which meant, I got bumped to 1st place in our age group!! I've never been in a race when they've done that before, but thought it was quite cool!! It's been a long time since I've won something at a race before! The only downside of today was that this is the first weekend in probably 9 months that I haven't done 10+ miles. So, I'm sort of feeling guilty about that. But, maybe that's okay - I know I don't have a problem running the longer distances. Maybe my body will appreciate me backing off a bit for one week???
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