FanNation - The Republic of Sport

So this is the first blog for Pre's People, a group for all you runner's out there, in a while, so I will try to make it short.

On June 1, I ran my first 5K since November, 2007, in an effort to gauge where I am before my cross country training really kicks in.  This summer I plan to do the most intense training regimen of my high school career thus far because, well, I want to win.  My school's team was somewhat dominate in the past in cross country, but is winless in the five years since it has moved from the lower conference to the higher conference of our athletic association.  After cross country ended last year, we congregated and determined that we were going to work hard this summer.

I am going to use that run, my town's annual run, as my measuring stick for improvement.  I ran the race in 22:09, which is a new personal record (PR) for a 5K for me.  My previous PR for a 5K was 23:02, which was set in November, 2007, at my last cross country race.  I finished 163^rd out of the 964 people entered in the race, and I finished 38^th out of the 61 people entered in my age group.  My PR for a three-mile race is 21:36, set last October.  My 5K from yesterday converts over to about a 21:30 three-miler, so I am at where I was when I was at my prime last cross country season, a good sign for me.  I am hoping to break 19:00 at our first invitational of the season in September and 18:00 at our championship meet in November.  Those are lofty goals it seems virtually impossible to achieve, but it's worth a try.

Last week's race started bright and early at 8:00 AM.  I awoke at about 6:15 to call my friend and teammate to see if he was still going to come over to my house before we jogged up to the start.  We got up and registered about a half hour before the race started and warmed up.  I forgot how hot it can get on June mornings.  Before the race started, I was already sweating and a little nervous about how I would do.  The race started a little late and I went out strong.  I came through the mile mark in 6:42, which is decent for a 5K mile split for me.  In the second mile, I started to fade and the heat really started to get to me.  I came through the two mile mark at 13:50, which means I ran a 7:08 second mile.  Again, that's decent for me, as my two-mile PR during cross country last season was 14:12.  The last 1.1 miles was some of the hardest running I had done in a long, long time.  I finished the race at 22:09, which means my last 1.1 miles were in 8:29, which is FLAT OUT HORRIBLE.  Converting that last 1.1 miles to a mile would make it around 7:50-something, but still, that's bad.

I was pretty happy with my time, although I had wanted to break 22:00.  It felt good to be racing again and I feel that I can definitely shave two or three minutes off my time this summer with enough training.

I think I'm going to update here once in a while on my training and my progress to actually put some activity into this group.