AM Ran around the neighborhood to warm up with a few minutes of faster running, then off to the race. This is a pretty hard loop course as far as 5k's go. The first .50 is flat road, then climbs up singletrack for about 1 to 1.25 miles(the race director said this is about 500 feet worth of climbing, but I think it was more like 300. Still pretty good when you're tryin to run fast) then heads out to neighborhood roads with a pretty big descent back to the finish. I just wanted to run a hard effort and not go for time, so I didn't wear a watch. The gun went off and I was about 40th behind a huge group mainly comprised of the local high school XC team. I just held a decently hard pace and sure enough about 30 people blew up once we started climbing. My legs felt pretty dead here, so I think I should've backed off a little more this week leading up to the race. Not a huge deal, but would have liked more pop going up. I felt pretty good on the downhill and just tried to cover as much ground as I could per stride. Started to feel it by the end which has a short but steep uphill before turning into the finish. I walked for a minute, then headed back to run in with Lacy. She did really good for only picking up running again over the past few weeks. A girl started to gain on her about 200m from the finish, but she kicked it in gear to beat her. Super proud of her for that!
Overall I feel good about the time for a course like this. Hopefully it will make next week's 5k feel "easy". PM Road biking, 43:00
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