A disappointing 5K

19:52.20

My official time for last night's 5K.

I wasn't even close to 19:00 and I was disappointed.

My first mile was 6:04 and it felt terrible.  My 2nd mile was 6:20 and my third mile was 6:40 (estimated from my memory of my Garmin).  If I wanted to get sassy, I did win the race.  If I wanted to get sassier, I beat the cross country girl who got 2nd and was half my age.

I am still disappointed.

This time is only 8 seconds faster than my time on this course last year and 11 seconds SLOWER than the first 5K I did this year.  I have Shalane Flanagan's quote "Success is not linear" on my work computer and that definitely applies to my experience with the 5K this summer.  A huge womp womp.

 I have had very few runs this summer where I legitimately felt good.  Mostly my legs feel heavy and the run is more of a slog.  I am not overtraining - trust me.  I run 3-4 times a week and the longest run I have done in the past two months is 6 miles.

I need to work on pushing myself, especially if I am running by myself.  Yesterday I ran the first mile with a group of people, which had thinned out by mile marker 1.  I ran the rest of the race by myself, with the exception of the last .2 where a guy game from behind me.  At that moment, I was really dragging but my competitive nature fired up and I was able to really push and finish hard.  How do I tap into that competitive spirit when I am on my own?

Building on that, I really love my comfort zone.  I was not in my comfort zone last night, but every time it really hurt, I backed off...and still could finish strong and was fine when I stopped.  I don't like to hurt!  How weird is it that this was on the Runner's World Instagram feed last night:

So things to work on.  Not necessarily a bad thing.  Off to find another 5K to enter!

The one thing that was NOT disappointing is that Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run (one of my favorite songs) was playing when the gun went off.  Cliche, but awesome.