I made the very last minute decision to sign up for the Earth Day 5K over the weekend, mainly because I needed to get a short run in and the race was five minutes from my house.

The race was hosted by Pacers, one of the running stores in the DC area, which meant I'd earn some points in their race series. I've been doing a pretty solid job racking up points this season, since almost every race I've run so far has been one of their events. I'll get some nice swag at the end of the season.

The Earth Day 5K is one of Pacers' smaller events, but the start and finish line are a five-minute jog from my house, so how could I not sign up?

The race started at 8, and I rolled out of bed at 7:30, got dressed and jogged up to the start. Most low-key race start ever.

I met up with my friend Meredith who also happened to be running the race. You may remember her from when we ran the Hot Chocolate race back in December.


Meredith is pretty fast but we started the race together and she said she wasn't planning on racing hard, so I figured I'd run with her for as long as I could. Solid race plan right there ha.

But it actually ended up working at well. We ran and chatted about life and work and stuff and I was impressed by the fact that I could still manage to talk even though I was running much faster than normal.

The race starts out on a ridiculously long downhill and since it's an out-and-back course you get to run up the hill at the end. I was able to hang with Meredith for the first 2.5ish miles of the race, but on the hill on the way back I just couldn't match her pace anymore.

My pace dropped significantly in that last mile. I positive-split the crap out of this race:

Mile 1: 7:29
Mile 2: 8:01
Mile 3: 8:50
Last .1: 1:01

But I still managed to shave more than a minute off my PR, finishing in 25:21. That's an 8:10 average and was good enough for 81 out of 378 total runners.

I have raced the last three weekends in a row and have managed to set PR's in two of the three races. It's been a pretty solid spring race season for me.