My favorite 5K was this morning – the Park City 4th of July Mountain Run…or whatever incarnation they’re calling it now. It benefits the Park City Ski Team. I’ve run it on and off since I was 12 years old.

In the last four years, as I’ve progressed to getting back in shape, I have steadily increased my time by two minutes a year (30 min, 28 min, 26:15 last year). I didn’t expect the trend to continue this year. With the piriformis and the rotator cuff, I wasn’t anywhere near where I needed to be to run 24 minutes.

I’ve learned over the last several years that if I don’t want to fight the crowd the entire time (this year 549 women and 462 men were registered), you have to line up just behind the ‘fast people’. Turned out to be the right place for me this year as for most of the race we ran a pretty steady pace altogether, not to many people passing or being passed.

We had perfect weather today – it was cloudy and cool during the race. My hands were just slightly cold, but overall it was the perfect temp to not get overheated.

She doesn’t know it, but there’s a girl I graduated from high school with who is my ‘goal’ for this race. She was a swimmer in high school, I was a runner. But post high school, she kicks my butt in this 5K every year. This year, I started right behind her so I could at least keep an eye on how fast she was going. I saw her going the other way right after the turn around. That was great! I still finished behind her, but was much closer this year than in the past (50 seconds).

I knew during the race I was running a pretty good time. All the people I was around had a pretty comfortable pace going, and I knew from previous years they were faster than the people I usually run with (less small kids, more technical fabrics). And you know what? PR! 24:55! It wasn’t a two minute increase, but it was more than a minute! Plus it gives me a great goal to get to 24 next year, and injury free I think it’s possible.

7th in my age group and 65th woman overall! I’ll take that!

(Side note, I have this great desire to turn 30 to move up an age group…but I still would have been 7th in the 30 – 34 age group! Sigh…)