Healthy High 5K Race Recap

So my first race of the season is under my belt and it feels good!  Here are some of the pros and cons of the race:

PROS

The weather was perfect.
It was free.
It was along my normal running loop so I knew the course.

CONS

It was in the evening and I normally run in the morning.
My running buddy is a lot faster than me so we didn't get to run together.
The big hill in the last half mile of the race.

Here are some pictures pre-race:

Look at all those runners.  That's my head in the bottom right corner, in case you were wondering.

Warming up with my buddy Andrew.

See how pumped we are?  Andrew is also my shopping buddy!

And of course, one of Patrick and I!

So now I'll tell you a little bit about the race itself.  At the starting line I noticed a lady with a stroller that had 2 kids in it.  I said to Andrew that I was not going to let her beat me with that ginormous stroller!  Then the next thing I know, we're off!  Obviously, since the race is free it's pretty low-budget.  However, I had no idea we were about to start.  Yikes!  The lady with the stroller started off ahead of me, but I made sure to keep her in my sights.  I usually don't choose people to try and pick off, but I tried it out this time.  In the first mile I picked out a woman and I picked her off.  Yes!  Then, in the second mile, I chose another younger girl to overtake, which I did.  Yes again! 

Now, the woman with the stroller was still ahead of me.  I knew I needed to make my move soon.  Well, we got to the big hill and there was no way she could run up the hill with the stroller and another runner had to help her push it up.  When she got to the top she continued to walk.  I started gaining on her.  At the final turn, I finally got in front of her.  And I stayed there and pumped it to the end.  Success!  I didn't let her beat me!  At that point, I didn't even care about my time.  I was so proud of being able to push myself through the race.  Here I am trying to look cheery at the end of the race:

Here are the stats:

Mile 1: 9.38 min

Mile 2: 10.49 min

Mile 3.1: 12.01 min

Overall Time: 32.18 min

I beat last year's time by almost 3 minutes, exactly.  I would have liked to be under 32 minutes, but there is room for improvement later on in the season.  Looking at the stats, I think I may have started out a little too fast and I just didn't have enough juice for the end.  I'm going to try to work on this during my training runs so that my next race is even better!