Final 5 by the 5th Virtual Race

Let me start by wishing you all a HAPPY NATIONAL RUNNING DAY!! I'll be heading out for a run later today, but wanted to tell you all about yesterday's run first.

I ran my final 5 by the 5th 5k.

I decided to take the same route as my first 5 by the 5th 5k. I'd like to say that my improvement in time really wow'ed me, but this 5k was actually 7 seconds SLOWER than the one in January. *sigh* Of course, with the heat difference from Jan to June, I'm certainly not going to beat myself up about it.

This was also my first run with my new Soleus GPS Fit 1.0. I hadn't run with a GPS watch in years, so I was super excited for this to arrive. Way back in Feb, I won a gift certificate to Holabird Sports from #RunChat. It took me months to decide how spend my $50, but I finally decided to put it towards this GPS watch.

When I took it out of the box Monday night, Jeff commented that he might just have to steal it. What would you possibly do with a GPS watch? I had to ask my non-runner husband. LOL. He just liked the look of it.

I thought the watch a little less intuitive to set-up than I would have liked, but after one run, I think I'm much more confident in how it works. Of course, there are definitely some features I have yet to investigate. It is a pretty simple watch, though. Not a whole lot of bells and whistles, but that's not really what I need anyway.

What I need is some additional motivation along the way. And this watch certainly seemed to help push me along.

I ran this race yesterday with no music, no phone. Just my new watch. The occasional glance here and there kept me motivated to push a little harder.

Well, until I started the 3rd mile. :)

Mile 1 - 9 minutes, 9 seconds
I felt great. Maybe started out a little fast, but I was okay with it. Just enjoying the route and the run.

Mile 2 - 8 minutes, 37 seconds
Wow. I was shocked at my speedy-ness. I worked hard for that mile, but I still felt great.

Mile 3 - 9 minutes, 30 seconds
This mile was hard. I kept wanting to push myself to keep up the pace, but my legs had other plans. They kept slowing down despite all my mental tricks. It seemed that every time I glanced at my watch, my pace got slower and slower. Never did it get slower than 10:00 min/mi, though. Yay!

Mile 3.1 - 1 minute, 15 seconds
I really felt like I ran this final 0.1 miles a LOT faster. I pushed it at the end, but this time doesn't seem to reflect that. *sigh*

Overall time - 28:31
Definitely no PR on this race, but like I said, no big deal. It was already in the 80s, which seems quite cool compared to the 100+ temps we've been hitting, but, in reality, is still quite warm for running.

I'm sad to see the end of this series. :-( It was fun and a great motivator to start the month out right.

My times were kind of all over the place throughout the series.

Jan - 28:24
Feb - 27:09
Mar - 27:21
Apr - 31:16
May - 27:40
Jun - 28:31

But I'm so glad that I stuck with it for the entire series - even the months when it took a LOT of convincing to get my butt out the door. I had hoped to see some improvement in speed over the 6 months, but I'm totally happy with the results of this series.

Did you run some or all of this virtual race series? I'd love to hear how it went for you!
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