(over)thinking about the 5K

Tomorrow morning is the Journey of Hope 5K, a "family run/walk" to raise money for free mammograms for women in need. Hope-fully (see what I did there?) there will be a few actual runners there to race against, and it won't just be a huge mass of people in pink walking together - not that I object to people walking 5Ks, but I would like to be able to use this as a fitness gauge, and that means I need 1) other people near my pace to try to beat, and 2) no people walking in front of me and getting in my way. If the course is similar to the 5Ks I have run before in this subdivision, it will make a loop on a bike path and then return the same way, so there will be people going in both directions. But if it's as big an event as it seems to be from last year's photos, they probably will try to route it as a single large loop - I hope (as it were) so!

So, a 5K. Those of you who have read my journal for some time know that I HATE 5Ks. That's probably because I almost always go out too fast, and then I am miserable for the entire second half while not really running all that fast. This time, I'm going to try to keep my pace under control early, and aim for more even splits than usual - while still trying to run fast, of course.

My PR is 21:03, but that was on an extremely downhill course and though I'm thinking about trying hard to beat it on a flat course sometime, I don't think it's going to happen on marathon training; lots of miles, but most of them easy. I ought to be able to beat my flat(-ish) course PR of 21:43 from February, though. (These races were on a different course - I haven't run in this subdivision since 2010, when I ran a 22:44 5K best.)

( Numbers geek overthinking and planning that will probably be abandoned in the first quarter-mile, ahoy. )