Sioux Falls Parks and Rec Race Goals

I was feeling really great after the Sioux Falls half marathon. I finished strong, a good chunk of the "race" was in recovery heart rate zone because my fitness has improved so much this summer (!!), and it was the first half marathon I've done in quite some time that I thought, upon finishing, I could totally do 26.2 today.

Whoa.

That's exciting.

But once the dust settled, I caught myself thinking, hmmm.... I wonder what I would've ran if I had raced the course. Could I have broken 2? I think I'm in shape for it, but it's a hard course, and it was incredibly humid. Would the humidity have effected me if I was running harder?

And then I started looking at my goal time for the Twin Cities 10 Mile. Fun fact: last June, before we started training for the race, I wrote down a goal time for TC10 and the November half marathon on a sticky note and hung it up in my locker at work. I paid it no attention for the past few months, only to re-calculate a goal time based on some other data and realized that it matched up.... exactly. Well that's creepy.

So, when I was looking at my goal time, I started to panic a little. Why are goal paces so terrifying?? I looked at McMillans calculator and saw that an 8:08 paced 5k would translate to my goal time. That seems doable. All of my 3k-5k paced speedwork has been in the 7:49-8:10 range.

And then I remembered that our Parks and Rec was putting on a 5k Monday evening. We can't go to most of them this fall since we're training for TC10, but I thought a quick little 3 mile tune up race might be that final mental push to get my brain committed to thinking that I *can* do the goal time I have laid out. I've been running #ALLTHEMILES this year, but I haven't been racing much, so I'm really lacking that strength and ability to know I can push through the suck that comes with racing more frequently.

Tonight I'll be lining up for a 5k (or probably 3 mile, as it tends to be a short course) and seeing what these legs have in them. An 8:08 would be perfect. A sub 8 would make me do a happy dance (I couldn't even tell you the last time I had a sub 8 5k pace, maybe 2011??), and an 8:10-8:15 would even make me happy since we've ran a lot of miles the last few months.

Stay tuned!