As I committed to publicly on January 25, I ran the Magnuson Spring Series 5K last weekend. It was a cold and windy day (25+ knot winds -- lots of wind surfers out). Waiting around before the race was pretty uncomfortable, but fortunately the race wasn't super crowded so I was able to park close to the start (and wait in the car).

Once the race started, things felt better. The sun came out, and hills blocked the wind for part of the course. As usual, I started out too fast (even though I was trying not to). I was hurting by the end, but I managed to push out a 30:56 overall time. This was slower than my goal of 30 minutes, and slower than all of my previous 5K runs nine years ago, but I was happy to average just under 10 minute miles (9:59/mile). My splits were 9:29 (too fast!), 10:10, 10:12 and (on track for) 9:10 for the last .1 mile.

Being older definitely makes things harder, and to be frank, I didn't run nearly enough over the last two months to expect anything else. The friend who signed up with me bailed, so I wound up doing this alone. In the end that was probably better, so no one I knew saw the agony on my face.

According to the official results, I finished 56th overall out of 142 runners. Unfortunately, they didn't report results by age group.

All that aside, it was fun to test myself and motivational to have the goal of running the race. I need to figure out my next goal race now.