If you were one of the eight people that viewed my last post, you would know that I am reading the book Brain Training for Runners and have been running this winter. Anyway, I did the Kent Christmas Rush on December 12th, which is a community 5K/10K run for anyone that would like to participate. I do this race every year, and many of my cross country teammates do as well. I finished in the top 20 for the first time every at 17th, and ran a 18:39. This is not the fastest I have ran, but since it is the off season I consider this a great success. I believe that this run was a tune-up race as defined here "Tune-up races are races that precede your peak race. As mentioned above, they make great breakthrough workouts because the competitive atmosphere of races stimulates a higher level of sympathetic nervous system arousal..." (Fitzgerald 21) All of my training is going towards peaking at the end of April/beginning of May at the end of the track season.
In this race I also worked on my pacing, "But a realistic consideration of how split times are used in racing yields the inevitable conclusion that runners rely on a subconscious feel for a pace to a far greater extent than they rely on the clock." (Fitzgerald 49) 
My average pace for the 5K was 6:01 per mile, and I was within 10 seconds of this pace every mile, which shows that I did an excellent job pacing myself for the whole race.
What other fun races do you know of that I could do? Do you know of any workouts I can do to help me with my pacing?
This is awesome how you are making your self a better athlete through this book. As for different workouts you could try do a hike instead of a straight run for a change.
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