Practice 5K

I've failed to mention that my running adventure began with my sister. We each signed up for the Komen Race for the Cure last year. Shortly thereafter, she decided to do a half marathon. In sure little sister style, I said, "I wanna do it, too!" and so our running began. We have now completed two half marathons together... or mostly together (more on that in another post!). This marks our second year participating as competitors in the Komen Race for the Cure since we started on this adventure and, as she lives in Ohio and I live in Raleigh, NC we had to do them separately. My sis completed her race a few weeks ago in record (at least to me!) time: under 30 minutes! I've had more time to prepare and should arguably be able to do the same...

But I'm nervous. I've been doing interval runs and tempo workouts (although probably not as fast as I should have been doing them) to match her time. And now the race is 8 days away... too short an amount of time to actually make any real progress so tomorrow I'm testing myself to see what I can do. I'm running the course with a faster friend who will pace me and I hope to finish this test run in... well, I'm not sure. I think I'd be happy to finish in under 33 minutes. My real goal might be to finish in 31, though... I'm worried. If I really push myself tomorrow, will I be able to push myself a week later? I know the adrenaline of the race will carry me through quite a bit so I think I should go for it... I think.

I've already decided that I'm going to sign up for another 5k this summer to see if I can improve upon next week's time. I'm hoping to use this summer to build up my speed (if we can call it that), so that sis and I can finish our next half marathon - hello City of Oaks! - in under 2:20. Seems doable right? That would be shaving off 16 minutes from my best time, though... Fingers crossed that this practice 5k goes well! I need a good gauge of what I'm capable of so I can get my training for the fall half underway...