Guess what?  It’s snowing out again!  I’ll be headed to the kitchen to make another warm and hearty stew in a few minutes, but first I want to recap the 5K that I ran this morning.  It was the first in a series of four winter races sponsored by the Athlete’s Closet, a local running store in West Chester, PA.  I finished in 25:27 (approximately… official results aren’t posted yet) and I somehow managed to place first in my age group!

Matt sat this race out because he’s been having some serious back pain.  I missed him on the course but I still got to see him at the start and finish cheering me on which was nice.

I tried something new with RunKeeper today.  Usually I have the app report my time, pace, distance, etc. every 5 minutes and every .5 miles.  I realize that’s a ton of stat reporting but it gives me something to think about during the race.  This race, however, I decided to do away with all of the stats.  I set RunKeeper to only tell me my stats when the race time hit 25 minutes.  In other words, I hoped that I would finish the race before hearing any stats!  As it turned out, the finish line was within sight and I was already running as fast as I could when my phone started talking to me, so I was pretty close to my goal.  After I crossed the finish line I looked at my splits and realized that this is the first time that I’ve ever managed to run my 3rd mile faster than my 2nd… woohoo!!

When the race was over all of the runners gathered at the Athlete’s Closet for cookies, water, and a quick awards ceremony.  The results weren’t posted so I didn’t even know my official time, much less how I had finished relative to other 20-29 year old females.  As a result I was shocked when they called my name for top in my age group.  I got this shiny medal with the event name engraved on the back… cool!!

Our next race is the Athlete’s Closet New Year’s 5K on January 4th.  I don’t know if it will be the exact same course, but based on today’s terrain I should probably do some serious hill training between now and then!  🙂

Miles since last post:  75.6
Days since last post:  16
Average Daily Miles since July 18th: 4.778
TOTAL MILES: 716.8

Related Posts:
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•  Let’s Go Streaking! (11/21/13)
•  Trinity Presbyterian 5K (11/2/13)
•  Oy Vey 5K (10/27/13)
•  Fueled Up & Fired Up 5K (10/19/13)
•  Limping my Way to 400 Miles (10/3/13)
•  Run-A-Muck 5K (9/22/13)
•  The Challenge Begins: 100 Mile iPad Mini Challenge (7/23/13)