The itch to race...

Alright, so I realize that it's only been a month since my Olympic triathlon.  It's also only a month until my half marathon.

But, I am getting the itch to race.

There's a couple of reasons I see for this.  Part of it is purely that racing energizes me and motivates me.  The week after a race, I feel fabulous.  Another reason is that I feel like I have unfinished business at both the 5k and 10k distance.

The unfinished business is running a (stand alone) 5K in under 30 minutes.  Also, the desire to run a 10K in under 60.

I firmly believe that both are within my capabilities.  I *sort of* ran a sub-30 5K at last year's resolution run (on a short course).  I've also run two sub-30 5Ks as the final leg of sprint triathlons.  In fact, I only missed it on my third sprint by 2 seconds, and that was on a 31c (89f) day.

Then, there's the 10K distance.  I have not yet "sort of" run a sub-60 10K, but I've come close.  I came 13 seconds away at the St Patrick's day race.  On that day, I was hoping to break 62 minutes, so my time was great, but still frustrating to come so close to another milestone.  In Banff, after swimming and biking for over 2 hours, I ran 10K in 61:05.  Interesting story about that day: I expected to do the run in about 65 minutes, but my garmin had gone wacky and I had no idea what my actual pace was.  Had I realized I was going that fast, I would have slowed down, because I did not think I was capable of running that pace at the end of a triathlon.


And that's the thing.  So much of this is mental.  If you believe you can't do something, you probably can't.  If you believe you can and you give it your all, who knows?  Sometimes success requires near misses along the way.

Right now, I believe that I am capable of running a sub-60 10K in a race, and I'm ready to do it.  I also want to do it while I can still see the goal as a challenge, not a given.

So, yesterday, I searched for upcoming races.  Low and behold, there's a 10K Thanksgiving run that I can do on Sunday (aka tomorrow).  Online sign up has ended, but I can sign up on site in the morning.

Soon, I'll add a sub-60 10K to my list of accomplishments.