"St. Paddy's Day Great Race of the Great Plains"

Yesterday I ran this 8k. This is a well done and well attended race. Since it's in the middle of March, you never know what the weather will be like. Last year it was cold and windy. This year it was overcast and rain was possible. It was cool, mid 40's, but not cold. There was no wind. I decided I wanted to hold 4:30 k's which would put me right at 36 minutes. We started and when I checked my watch, I was doing right at 4. I knew that was too fast and I backed off just a bit to 4:20. This course is at Lake Hefner, which is why it was unusual not to be windy, and is an out, back past the start and then back to the finish. I felt good in the first half, and started feeling even better. I never really fell below the 4:30 mark and picked it up to 4:15 for the last k. This resulted in a new P R 34:45, ok, by 2 seconds, but I'll take them where I can get them. That was good enough for 2nd in my age group, 1st did it in 30 minutes so I don't have to kick myself for not cutting a few seconds off my time. This race gave trophies for everything including age group placings. This race did what I wish more races would do. If you won a top 3 trophy, you didn't get both that and the age group trophy. Since the guy that beat me won 2nd place masters, I got the 1st place trophy.

Today I ran with the running club. They were doing 11 miles, supposed to be 12 but there is construction on the course. I ran fairly conservatively, but overdid it just a bit. I've been having some IT band issues, and it flares up around 8 miles. I've been stretching it but I need to keep my runs under 8 until I get over this.