the old guy out there

I laced up my cross country spikes and ran an collegiate 8k for the first time since Oct 2003 yesterday. Man have I changed a lot. I went out nice and conservative. I was being passed by what felt like everyone in the race. I kept telling myself to stay calm, be patient and run my race. Just before the mile I peeked at my watch 4:50. I knew it was going to be a quick mile. It ended up being 5:09, I proceeded to say out loud, “man there are going to be a lot of people coming back.” I then started to pass and I was never passed again for the rest of the race. Looking back at the splits I could have ran harder during mile 4, I was really hoping to have a solid last two miles. I also felt that I was not willing to hurt enough the last 1000, 800, 400 meters. I picked it up but could have gone harder. All in all I am very happy with the effort and it was even a little quicker than I thought I would run. I feel like training is going very well and if I can stay healthy it could be very exciting. Time to move on. Lots of work left to do.