JINGLE ALL THE WAY 8K (race report):

This race is on the same course in downtown DC as the St. Patrick's Day 8k in March, and I've done both several times. Every time I've run it, my Garmin has measured the course at or just over 5 miles, perhaps because of the wide avenues downtown. The course is mostly flat except for a small hill from the end of the first mile through roughly the first third of the second mile, which you then run back down. The main feature of the course that slows one down are the turn-arounds, of which there are four, including two in close succession at the top of the hill just mentioned. Going into this race, my "8k" PR was 30:51 from the last time I ran the course in March 2012. Since tons of superfast runners show up for this race, I wasn't foolish enough to imagine that I could come anywhere close to winning or even to running with the leaders briefly. My goal was to break 30 minutes, or at least to beat my previous PR. I tried to run the race as if I were doing a 5k and trying to hold a 5:58 average pace, and then I just hoped that after 5k competitiveness and guts would kick in to help me maintain or lower that pace for another two miles. Basically, I stuck to my plan through 5k but slowed down after that. Here are my paces for each mile, next to those for the last time I ran the course (but the times don't add up perfectly because the distances are not exactly the same, depending on how well or poorly I ran the tangents):

           12/9/12   3/11/12

mile 1 - 5:58        5:58

mile 2 - 6:05.5     6:11

mile 3 - 5:55        6:09

mile 4 - 6:18        6:17

mile 5 - 6:11        6:16

finish  - 30:30      30:51

My pace through 5k was 5:59, just a hair slower than my goal. I can blame the weather both for being slightly under my goal pace at 5k and partly for slowing down after that, because a little before 5k we hit a moderate headwind that we ran into for much of mile 4, which (like mile 5) also included a turn-around. Before hitting that headwind my pace for mile 3 was in the high 5:40's, but even the 5:55 split I ended up with for mile 3 accounts for most of the difference between my finishing time in this race and in the race last March. The wind may have been at my back for part of mile 3, but I think the main difference is that I was able to conserve more energy (and run slightly faster) on the hill and the turn-arounds in mile two, and then discharge that energy in mile 3, simply because I'm in slightly better shape than I was in March. Maybe I could have broken 30 or gotten closer to it with better weather - besides the wind, it had stopped raining shortly before the race and was oddly muggy for December. But such speculation aside, my actual performance shows that I'm slightly stronger in miles 2 and 3 than I was last Spring, but after 3 miles I remain as weak as I was before at this sort of pace. It's a small PR, which means that complaints are not allowed. But it's still disappointing that I haven't made more significant gains in 9 months, even if I was focusing on the marathon for most of that time. With some more balanced training, I should be able to run faster at this and similar distances soon. I'm starting to think that 6:00/mi. pace is just a kind of psychological barrier for me. If winter weather continues to hold off for a while longer, I may test that hypothesis in a 5k or two by starting out with and trying to hold onto a pace that's much faster.