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I Won My First Road Race Yesterday
Yesterday, I haphazardly participated in a 12-mile race. I wasn’t expecting much of it, and I was running it just to get a workout in.
It was a day where it was 59 degrees, and perfect running conditions. I wasn’t confident in my fitness at the time. During the summer, I had to try really hard to run really slow. It was an unusually hot summer where it was just incredibly hot and humid on most days, and 6 minute miles, which would usually be easy for me at the peak of my fitness, suddenly became very difficult.
I knew what I was capable of before, and it’s not like I was a drastically different person than I was six months ago.
The first four miles of the race, I took it out steady. I controlled my effort and had two guys gap me by 20 to 25 meters. They were still in sight, but at times they just got farther and farther. In the past, I would have forced myself to stick with them and overexert myself, but I kept my effort controlled and didn’t surge when they gapped me.
I was running my own race. And I wasn’t going to let comparing myself to the people around me dictate my performance.
At mile 4, I caught up to the two guys and took the lead. After that, the majority of…
