Rascal Roundup 5k Race

Thoughts on today's race:

- It was COLD! - about 30 degrees when we arrived.

- It was really alot of fun watching my wife and kids run a 1k together. It was my kid's first race. They had a blast, and all want to do another one some time.

- It was also really cool to see my step dad David run his first 5k (that's him in the Harley gear in the photo below).

- Even though I didn't PR today, I still had a pretty decent time of 24:28, which was good enough to take third place in my age group. So I scored my first age-group award, which is a medal that is like a dog-tag (there was a kind of camo theme to the race, so I guess Army dog tags go well with the theme).

- Post-race, they had some fun stuff for the kids, including a bounce house (behind me in the photo above) and face painting.

As I mentioned above, I didn't PR, but I'm still happy with my time. My splits for the first two miles were right about on target (7:39; 7:48). The third mile, things started to unravel (mile 3 - 8:08!?!). Here's my excuse:

See that hill around the 2-mile point? It killed me.

So what did I learn? I think it turned out to be a good plan to go out easy and save something for the end. It helped me get through the hills. I'm sure I finished faster than I would have if I had burned up too much during the first half of the race.

I need more hill work.