Thanksgiving Thank You

Apparently, all of you have not been paying attention to the strategy here at Running My Own Race. See, while all of you set goals for yourselves that you stretch and push to achieve, over here, I promote the low bar strategy. Training hard is a must, but when it comes to goals, I generally shoot for an average performance. After all, average is in the middle between the best and worst possible results, so there is nothing wrong with planning on an average performance.

No, not you guys. I ask you for help setting my Turkey Trot 5K goal, and you give me goals that are more than just a little stretch. On the one hand, I was really flattered that others have confidence in me. On the other hand, I was really feeling the pressure not to let everyone down. I said I would run my fastest, so lining up for the race this morning, I was a little nervous.

It was a great day for a 5K. It was overcast and hit 40 degrees by the start. We met a couple friends before the race. Here is a picture of Mike and I with our friend Josh who was running his first race. We talked strategy before the race: be controlled the first mile, push it the second mile, and hang on for the third mile. Congrats to Josh on his first 5K! He did great and it was so fun to watch him become a "real" runner by racing.

Since we had just talked to Josh about strategy, did I listen to my own advice? No way. You guys gave me some really tough times to match, so I ran as fast as I could from the start. Mile 1- 8:19, Mile 2- 8:30. After mile 2, I was really struggling. I was truly running as hard as I could and it was all I could do to hold on to the finish. Mercifully, the course was a little short. I think it was .05 miles short. Sure, .05 miles isn't very far, but I was so tired and hey, for me .05 miles is probably 15 or 20 seconds. My total time 25:39! Overall pace 8:16 for 3.1 miles.

The moral of the story is that your strategy of setting a stretch goal really works, because it really motivated me to try and live up to your expectations. There was one guess that was faster, but I ran faster than all of the rest of the guesses. I am taking note that a little pressure is a good thing and will keep it in mind when I set my goals for future races.

Brian Flash had the winning guess! He guessed 25:40 and I'm so excited to tell you about his blog, Team Flash. Brian lives in the west suburbs of St. Louis, MO, only a few miles from where I grew up. I love that although we never met when I lived there, we have "met" through the blogger world. This is a great time to start following him because he and his brother just signed up for Comrades, an Ultra in South Africa on May 10, 2010. He has a great sense of humor and I can't wait to follow his training and ultimately his journey. His wife, Kathy, and the rest of the family runs and they just look like they are having a blast. Thank you Brian and everyone else for your motivating goals!

I love running a Thanksgiving Day run. In my running life, I'm thankful for everyone who listens to my boring stories about training, races, and injuries. I'm thankful for everyone who shares their boring stories with me because, honestly, I don't find them boring. I'm thankful for my husband who is always the first one to tell me I can do something. I'm thankful for my friends who run my pokey pace with me and enrich my life by sharing their lives with me. Thanks for all of your words of encouragement and the smiles all of you give me by sharing your stories in your blogs and comments. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Turkey Trot Preview

Before I head to Las Vegas for the half marathon, I have one other little race to take care of. When we used to live close to family, I would cook Thanksgiving dinner on occasion. Although I am not much of a cook, I can actually put together a nice holiday meal by relying on favorite recipes. Now that we are always traveling for Thanksgiving, we are the lucky guests at another's table. Since I don't have the pressure of getting the turkey in the oven, a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving is a must.

I was just on Athlinks.com checking out my previous Turkey Trot 5K times. Have you been over to Athlinks? I love it because it keeps track of all of your races, times and paces. You can look up other runners, too, but of course I would never do that because we should all just be worried about ourselves and who cares about what anyone else is doing. Ya, right. Anyway, I was noticing that my PR pace for a 5K is 8:08 per mile from back in 2007. Last Thanksgiving my pace was 8:10, but when I ran a 5K this spring my pace was 9:16. It appears that I have slowed considerably.

While its too late to set a goal for the 5K that I could actually do any training towards, I think I will set a goal just for motivational purposes. More accurately, it would be a guess as to what my time is going to be. I've been feeling slow lately, so it's hard for me to guess how fast I could actually go if I were willing to suffer for a whole 3.1 miles. Do I want to suffer? The half marathon is the next week, so maybe I shouldn't suffer too much.

I don't know what time to pick. Does anyone want to help? Maybe you should give me my goal pace for the 5K? Here are the facts: my pace at my last 5K in the spring was 9:16. I also ran an 8K in the spring and my pace was 8:52. The Thanksgiving race this year is held on a reasonably flat course. This is a charity race, so it's questionable if the course will really be 3.1 miles. I'm going to go by the time and distance as recorded by my Garmin. Leave me a comment with your predicted pace. I wish I could give the winner a prize, but seeing as you all don't live next door, if you are the closest I will link to your profile/blog in my next post and hail your prediction skills. I promise to run my fastest!