Racing TODAY! (But Not "Racing.")

So on Tuesday, I registered for a race TODAY. (In an hour, actually!) My running team (the YWCA of Minneapolis Endurance Sports Team) lost a few members this year, and it didn't look like we'd have a full team of 5 guys for today's race. Once we got 4 guys confirmed, I signed up so we'd have a full team and be able to score points for the year-long USATF series.

I'm still hesitant to run HARD on my sore knee/quad being that even a hilly bike workout at the end of February caused it to flare up a bit. I need to "test" it soon because it's coming up upon duathlon season, and I'm hoping to race hard. So we'll see how hard I race today.

So here are my 2 goals:

• ONE: Don't get injured. I don't need to be dumb here.

[And to do #1, I need to do this:]

• TWO: Set a PW ("personal worst"). I've ran this race 3 times. The first time was in 2008 when I was just starting to do speedwork, and I ran it in 30:30 (6:06 pace). I wore athletic shorts and cotton boxers for that race:

That 30:30 performance was my slowest (29:15 in 2012 and 29:20 in 2016), and I WILL race slower than that today. I'm thinking I should probably be able to run 6:15s - 6:30s to still feel how I want to, but we'll see (that'd be around 31:15 - 32:30 for a finishing time). I'm NOT going hard. In fact, I might not even be going "tempo" pace. Like I said above, I'd like to "test" it, so if I'm feeling good, I may up the pace a bit as I go. But I NEED to keep my ego in check and not try to "race" anyone. The fastest I should go if my leg is feeling great should be around 31:00. I'm only testing my quad/knee and putting up points for my team.

Back soon with a race report and pictures!