23 Minutes

Garden Expo was in town this weekend. Which for me meant sitting at a booth talking about compost for a good part of three days. Good thing is, Garden Expo is a sure sign that spring is around the corner.

Saturday morning I was able to sneak out of the expo and do my long run up in Madison. Was planning on doing an out and back, but by the time I got to my midway point I was so far downtown that I decided to loop through town and head back to the Expo on the bike path.

Sooooo, 40 or so minutes into my 1-hour run I find myself on what appears to be a course for a race of some sort. The first course marshall I came across confirmed that the frosty 5k was running that morning. The second set of course marshalls confirmed that I was in fact winning, which earned an uncharacteristic (for me) fist pump in the air.

Knowing that the actual leaders were somewhere back there made me kick it in for the last 20 minutes, just didn't want to lose my lead, and I didn't. My planned route back to the expo followed the actual race course back to within maybe a couple hundred yards of the finish line. Good run, if such a thing actually exists.

There was enough downtime at expo and while running this week that I started thinking about setting a running goal for the season. At some point today I decided to shoot for a 23-minute 5k. I have no reason to believe I can actually do it, but what the hell. I think 26:23 is my PR to date, and I've never run faster, at any distance. For whatever reason 23:30 seems attainable, 23 minutes seems crazy.