This past weekend I ran my first official 5k of 2010.  (I had actually signed up for the 10k at the same event but had a bit of a cold and decided to not push things with my half marathon only a few weeks away.)  While I was not super-pleased with my time of 27:26 (9:00 pace) I had to remind myself that I was sick and that a 9:00 pace is what my target is for the half marathon.

Also running in this event was my friend Ron.  His goal was under 30:00 and I got to watch him “sprint” the finish to get a 29:52 time.  Now he is talking about the Peachtree Road Race in July here in Atlanta which is a fun race that I am also planning to do this year.

I’d really like to PR the 5k, 10k, and half marathon distances this year.  The 10k and half will be easier to achieve than that 5k where my PR is 24:55 which is good enough to place me in the top 3 in my age group for most of our local races.  There is still plenty of year left though so I still have plenty of time to pull this off.

I completed the first week of half marathon training.  It was tough but in the end it was enjoyable and I managed to lose 2.4 of the 13 pounds I had gained back toward the end of 2009.  The hardest part was the long run on Saturday but I think that was because I need to move the Friday run to the morning before I go to work.  Running Friday night and then trying to go for the long run on Saturday morning just does not work… not enough recovery time.  Week 2 starts tonight.  I’ll see if I can keep up the 9:00ish pace I have been running.

I ran the US 10k again today.  I waited until about a week ago to make my mind up but decided to run it again after all.  I just remembered how brutal the course was last year and wasn’t sure I wanted to do that again.  In case you think I am kidding here is the elevation chart that my Garmin watch produced from the run this morning:

I did better than last year with an unofficial time of 56:12.  You can’t complain when you shave 6 minutes of you race time from the previous year.  If I could  shave off another 6 minutes I may earn a medal next year.  They give one to the first 1,000 finishers.

I managed to get a 3 mile run in while I was on vacation on Miami.  I was able to run on the beach since there is a road-like surface that vehicles use to service the beach.  It was noticably harder though with the wind, sun, and softer surface.  Here are the run stats.

Last night the Atlanta Track Club posted the official times from the Peachtree Road Race.  My official time was 54:31.  This is 2 seconds faster than the time I had recorded.!  I placed 6,808 out of 50,009 runners and 5,117 out of 26,171 men that ran.  My friend David finished 9 seconds in front of me in 6,708th place.  It is crazy to think that in only 9 seconds 100 people finished the race… in front of me.