It was naive of me to think that I could run a personal best at the Race for the Cure. There were far too many walkers clogging the route. The really annoying thing is that there shouldn’t have been any walkers on the race course at all. The walkers had their own course and were scheduled to start at a different time. Obviously a lot of people didn’t realize that or didn’t care. After all, rules apply to other people. *grumble* Next year I’ll definitely start close to the front of the pack. I’d rather be passed by the really fast people than have to pass the really slow people.

Anyhow, though my time of 27:30 wasn’t a personal best, it was still my best recorded race time. I figure I lost 2-3 minutes on the first mile alone. After that, though, I ran a hair over an 8-minute pace. Later in the day, I ran a training 5K in Schenley park with Edey and Father Michael Darcy (of the Oratory). My time on that was about 25:30.

My next race will be West Penn Track Club’s Pittsylvania Mile. I’m hoping for 7:30 or better. After that, I’ll be running the Father’s Days Us TOO 10K for prostate cancer research. My goal is to run it in 45 minutes or less. I’ve done sub-49:00 once in training, so I know it’s not impossible.

Today I ran my first race. 🙂 It was the Run Shadyside 5K. I finished in 28:32, so my mile pace was 9:12. It could have been better, but I wasn't disappointed. I learned a few lessons from today. 1) While it was a good idea for me to avoid coffee this morning, and hot chocolate isn't a known diuretic, I ought to limit my fluid intake prior to a race. Running with an uncomfortable bladder is suboptimal, to say the least. 2) I need to pace myself better. My first mile pace was about 30 seconds faster than it should have been. For the Great Race 10K, I'll be keeping pace with Rob of UnSpace. Hopefully, he'll keep me from going faster than 9 minutes/mile for the first half. 3) Though running with the vestiges of a head cold is doable, it's certainly not preferable. 😉

The image shown is a graph of my mile pace times since I started timing my runs (Open in a separate page to see at full size). I started running to shed some pounds and some fat, but now I'm enjoying the sport itself. It's a great way to push myself. Running faster than other people would be cool, but right now I'm focusing on beating myself. If I only worried about losing weight, I think I'd get discouraged because progress is slow. By setting time and distance goals for myself, I have something with more immediate results to strive for. I'm running the Great Race 10K next weekend and I might run the Pace Race 5K on October 8. If any Pittsburghers know of any races I might be interested in, please let me know.

For some good running advice, check out these UnSpace articles:

5K Race Strategy: A Must-Read
5K & 10K Race Strategy: Preparation
5K & 10K Race Strategy: The Race Course