A new 5K PR!! (finally)

I was getting to the point where I was going to have to add an asterisk to my 5K PR time.  My last PR came in July of 2009 and since that time I hadn't come within a minute of the time.  I was beginning to think that it was a fluke that I could run that fast.  After a failed attempt to break the PR on a Labor day run this year I decided that I had a serious mental block in the 5K and it might take an act of God and a dedicated run training schedule to get me to it.  
I did this race (Oklahoma Race to Defeat Diabetes 5K) on a whim. It was a groupon so I thought why not. I didn't do any type of speed training for the race, and actually I had taken it fairly easy since Brookhaven and hadn't run much at all. I didn't have high expectations and to keep myself from being caught up in the numbers I decided to take my own advice and leave Garmin at home. I wanted to just run by feel and let the mental game be put to rest. If I could run a fast race my head had to be the one that let me, not watching a clock. 
I decided to start with 8 min pack. Started out really really fast but everyone pulled back quickly and evened out. I found a nice even hard pace I felt I could keep and went on. I didn't hear the split at 1K, but I was feeling good so just kept going. I didn't know what I was running but didn't really care to much. The course meandered through campus so you never really found much sense in how far you had run. At the 2K mark I was running 10:35 which is right on pace for PR, but I know better then to bank on that - it was still early. Since the race ran mostly on sidewalks and they were narrow I got slowed down at bit at this point, not to bad and was probably good for my legs. Once we opened back up at the water stop everything spread out nicely. I had slowed down a bit at the 3K check point but I knew if I kept and even pace I would be good. Didn't hear 4K split. The course didn't run like I wanted it at the end so there was a small mental game with it being longer then I thought. When I got to the finish shoot and saw the clock for the first time I realized that I was in seconds of a PR. I turned on the burners and sprinted to the finish - surprisingly a lot left in the legs! I crossed gun time in 26:30 - depending on what chip time is I either PR'd by a few seconds or just missed it. Either way I am extremely happy with the outcome.
I've been reading about the idea of running by feel over the last few weeks and I really want to take this mentality into my marathon training so I don't get caught up in the time battle.  Because I've had so many mental issues in the 5K I felt that maybe if I used the run by feel idea that maybe I would run with my feeling instead of by the watch.  The mental game of my 5K is huge and today I showed that I could trust what my body told me I could do and push through from a great race!

Running bib book

So it isn't finished yet, but I made a scrapbook to put some of my running bibs in from 5k and 10k type races. Going to put a coil across the top with some ribbon mixed in, then add some pictures I have from different races and some bibs. Best part is it's expandable! I suck at the creative stuff like this so I had had enough by the time I finished yesterday but another year and I can add more!

Front Cover - then goes through all the pages.  Still some work to be done.