Let me start with the summary of Saturday: I ran a new personal record: 22:03. It was a very nice, satisfactory race, and if there is one thing that I regret is that I probably could have done better, if I pace myself better. Even though I perfectly understand the theory of negative splits and the dangers of going out too fast, the excitement of the race on Saturday carried me away, and I ran too fast at the beginning.

I felt strong, my warm-up was close to perfect, and I tried to set my effort level to "moderately hard" at the beginning: this is what I had figured would work during my training. Then I looked at my watch at the first mile marker, and I was terrified to realize that I ran the first mile at 6:45. That point I knew I was too fast, but it just didn't feel right to slow down, and I still felt quite great. At around 1.5 mile the all-too-familiar side stitches started to hit me. I'm quite sure they were signaling that my tempo was too fast. Then I did slow down a bit before they would become debilitating, and I tried to run through the pain. I missed the second mile marker, so I'm not sure what my speed was then, but there was a water station supposedly at mile 2, which I passed at about 14 minutes into the race. I saw several people passing me. I was still content, and I knew I couldn't run faster, or otherwise I would burst by the end. I may have been a little too conservative, not quite realizing how close the finish was.

Then I turned onto the final straight, and I looked up to the finish line clock that showed 21:20 or something at that point. It gave me some new energy and I tried to get in before it hit 22 minutes, but it was still quite far. I just saw the clock turning 22:00 before I got in; I thought my time was 22:01 or 22:02, but the official timing returned with 22:03.

If I didn't go out too fast, I could have done less then 22:00. One day, I may be able to run a sub-20 5K. For now, it isn't my goal: I did run the 5K withing 24 minutes, which projects to a sub-4-hour marathon, and this is all I care about. Next goal is 10K in 50 minutes in 8 weeks. My current time projects to about 46 minutes on 10K, so the 50 minutes should definitely be doable.

I'm not sure if I want to do the Cooper River Bridge race in Charleston in 8 weeks. It's a huge race with too many people, and it isn't ideal to travel more than 100 miles (one direction) for a race. I may just opt for measuring the time and distance for myself this time in Columbia.