First Race as a 30 Year Old

Wowsers, tomorrow marks my first race in the 30-39 category. *gulp* I absolutely love St. Patty's day and have run our local St. Patty's day race(s) for most of the years that I've been a runner (2007 5k, 2009 5k, 2010 5 mile, 2011 Irishman [5 mile, 5k, 1 mile]). I haven't done it the last couple of years for a number of reasons. The cost of the race has gotten really high. Most local halfs are $35-40 if you sign up by the early bird deadline, and the 5k and 5 mile cost the same as that.

One year that I ran the race there was extreme flooding, and the route wasn't changed, so runners had to go through mud that was inches deep, another year they started the route on a sidewalk instead of a road because they didn't get road closure permits, and with 100s of runners starting in that much congestion, it was a $#!t show to say the least.

I will say that this race does always have pretty killer long sleeve technical race shirts. They are some of my fave in my training shirt rotation.

This year, I'm racing a half in NYC the weekend after the St. Patty's day races. While tooling around on our local race schedule website, I found a Free Rebel Run planned for the same day as the St. Patty's day races. And it's free, as its name suggests. I convinced my friend Jenn to run it as well. Shockingly, the race day weather looks pretty great.

I haven't ran a 5k in...... over 2.5 years. Hah, and I know I won't be anywhere near a PR. But I would like to have a strong run that gives me confidence going in to my half marathon the following weekend. Since I'm hoping for a sub-2 slash close to 2 hour half next weekend, my goals for this 5k per McMillan race predictor are:

25:29 (8:12 pace) to 26:21 (8:29 pace)

As I'm seeing those paces, that doesn't seem like it should be hard, but my tempo paces have only been in the low 9's. However, after looking over my training log, I have had a set of mile repeats near the 8:30 range, so we'll see!

Regardless I'm excited to get out there in all my green glory to celebrate my favorite holiday with a hard effort run.

(OMG I loved those shoes. Fave running shoes EVER.)