The plan this morning was to go out and run a good 5k this morning with the Des News race. I knew it would be fast and a good opportunity to run some good miles and rebuild a little confidence from Saturday. Even though there is a lot of downhill I believe this was a good course of action after the debacle on Saturday at Draper. The field was pretty stacked at the start, I am always a little worried at this race because the first half mile is chaos. The pace was quick right from the start and immediately I was passed by a ton of people, I tried to keep my wits about me and just try to run comfortable. I had no idea what kind of pace we were running until we came through the first mile in 4:52, much faster than I was planning or even expecting. I kept plugging away hoping to bring some people back, and a few did, but it still seemed fast, second mile in 5:11. I kind of mentally imploded in the first part of the third mile, but regained my composure about half way through and ran more aggressively in the second half of this mile. Mile 3, 5:42. I felt like I was starting to move a lot better coming through the aid station and entertained thoughts of running through to mile 4, but I decided it was best to stay with my original plan and pull out at the 5k. My 5k split was 16:18, I am happy with that, and it is much faster than the split I recorded last year. There is no doubt that if I continued all the way through to the 10k I would have dropped off a bit, but still felt I was probably somewhere in the 33:30 range, but who knows!! I feel better about things today, but I know I need to work on staying more in the game with my head, I had a tough go for a little bit today, but was glad to be able to run through it. | 