a surprising finish

I've typed in about nine different post titles, but they all sound stupid.  And this one sets the post up to be way more exciting than it really is.  I'll give you a little overview, I ran the Mother's Day Run (5K) for the fourth year in a row yesterday (here is my first, second and third time), and I finished a lot faster than I expected.

Saturday night I pulled up last year's post, because I couldn't remember how fast I had finished, I thought it was pretty close to 30 minutes.  Wrong, well kind of, 28:30, but not as close to 30 as I thought.  That was discouraging, because I was hoping to beat last years pace, and my runs lately have been averaging nearly a 10 minute mile pace.  And I laughed out loud when I got to the end of the post, where I said maybe this year I'd beat my PR (24:48).  HA.  Never gonna happen.  At least this year anyway.

The good news is I got a decent night sleep, so I didn't have exhaustion working against me.  However my hip has been bothering me here and there since the half, and walking from the car to the start area I could feel it catching and pulling a little bit.  I figured it was shaping up to be a slow painful race.  Stubborness made me line up close to the 9 min mile sign anyway, because most of the time I refuse to admit that it would probably be good to slow down a little.

I'm a little too lazy to give a whole race play by play (that I'm sure anyone but me doesn't really care about anyway), but overall I was surprised with how good I felt throughout the race.  Somehow I reached the first mile in under nine minutes, so I just kind of went with it.  I kept waiting to hit a wall, and I did start to get tired and my breathing was a little tough, but knowing I had less than two miles to go I didn't feel the need to surrender to it.  I knew I had crossed the finish line in under 28 minutes and I was beyond thrilled.

Later in the afternoon I decided to look up my official time, and couldn't believe it.  26:49!!  Seriously, I have no idea what got in to me today, or why I haven't been able to manage a pace like that for any of my training runs.  I let my mind get the best of me most of the time I guess.  That time put me at 101/3575 overall, and 7/277 in my age division.  Truly I couldn't be more pleased with my finish.  And naturally that damn runners high is swaying me to believe that maybe I could actually get back in to it and be 'fast' again.  Remind me of that the next time I go for a run!