Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post
But I like competition too. Won my AG today, which I'm pretty happy about since it was my first try at 5 miles. I thought I was going to have to stop and puke twice in the last kilometer, but I managed to keep going. I'm pretty sure second place in my AG was someone I followed for most of the race and passed in the last mile or so - I had a 16 second gap. Didn't get rained on, which I could've used the cooling - I took a cup of water at the 3 mile aid station and poured all of it down the back of my shirt.

ETA: @TrekDianna, in terms of the comparison to a 5k, it's a little hard to tell since I'm only just getting back into the shorter races, and doing them AS my speedwork for the longer events, not as goal races, and without any other speedwork - but my average pace in the 5 miler was 4 sec/mile slower than I ran the 5k in June, and I was definitely closer to my limit this time. The courses were similar, in fact they started at the same place, so it's a pretty good comparison in terms of terrain - it was more humid this time but about the same temperature.
Nice! Congrats on winning your AG!

I think my 8k does part of the 5k course - that will be familiar, at least I won't be surprised this time with the hill that faces me when I go around the first corner. My regular running trail has the first 2 miles at a steady uphill that's not much of a hill, but even slows me down on my MTB. I think running that every other day is good for me - at least that's what I tell myself.