Three Seconds

Today was the first of three races that I'm sort of treating as a series. Four miles today, 10K next weekend, and two weeks after that, the Brooklyn Half. I've increased my weekly milage lately, and speed work and tempo runs have been going well, so it's time to see how well it will pay off.

With the longer races coming up, my plan was to not let today's race interrupt my training schedule, so instead of taking the day off yesterday, I did my scheduled long run. 

I've been feeling in such good shape, that I thought I could challenge my PR today. It's only four miles, after all -- who needs a day off for that, right?

In the first mile I felt reasonably fast, but not.... fresh. I had the feeling that that my legs might start to fade. Just the same, I kept charging, running 6:37 and 6:26 for my first two miles. That put me slightly ahead of PR pace, with the toughest mile coming up. I toughed out the third mile in 6:42, leaving me a couple of seconds behind. 

With just a few seconds to make up, and a downhill last mile to go, things looked good. The only problem was that I had worked really hard to get there, and did not have much left in the tank. I kept pushing though, and ran the last mile in 6:29, beating my PR by.... 3 seconds.

I checked my last 4 mile PR race report, and can you believe it, that was a 3 second PR as well.

That's just weird. 

My time of 26:16 was good enough for a tenth place finish in my age group, but I think that a lot of the faster guys had other things to attend to on Mother's Day. 

Next up: the Healthy Kidney 10K. It's a club points race, so I won't be in the top ten of my age group, but here is my pledge:  To PR by at least 4 SECONDS!