Suprise!!

This is just a quick little post about a tiny little race, but I'm very excited about it and had to share. 

The race this morning was one of the free 5Ks that MWR hosts on base.  I was actually pretty excited about it.  The weather was gorgeous.  We'd had an unexpected cool front move through, so it was about 60 degrees, a bit cooler than usual for this time of year in TX.  60 degrees, sunny, light breeze - really couldn't ask for better conditions.  And running felt great - strong, powerful, comfortable.  How running is supposed to feel!

So, I run my race, and am chatting with Zach and a friend at the end of the race, and all 3 of us had run really good races.  His friend and I had both run PRs, and Zach had comfortably beaten his goal time (his PR was way back in high school and was crazy-fast).  I had dropped so much time off my old PR (which was, by the way, about 5 years old, but I hadn't run close to that in ages) that I was wondering if I'd set my watch wrong.  I go by my wristwatch on these races, as (being free) there aren't the big time clocks around the course and no chip-timing, so my own stopwatch is usually my most accurate time.  Hearing that the guys had both had unexpectedly great runs too, I was wondering if the course had been mis-measured.  You know, 3 miles instead of 3.1.  I simply felt too good to have been that much faster than usual!

So, we got home, pulled up LogYourRun and mapped out the course.  No, it really was a full 5K!  I had just dropped almost a minute and a half from my best time!  Apparently running in an area in almost perfect weather, without high winds and absurd dryness, will make a difference. No, I don't miss the desert! 

And my new PR makes me feel like a Runner!  I ran 26:47, which is about a 8:38 pace.  My old PR was 28:00, which is a 9:00 minute pace.  I seem to hang out around the 10:00 pace a lot, which isn't anything to sneeze at, but can be considered more of a Jog than a Run.  But now, my PR pace is under 9 minutes!  That would be right about a 2 hr half-marathon!  That's getting into Real Runner territory!!  I've been bouncing off the walls all day thinking about it.  So proud of myself  :)

And really, how often do you run a race so well, surprise yourself so solidly that you're more likely to believe that the course is inaccurate than that you ran so fast?