Run for the oaks 5k

Good news and bad news...
I got a new PR! but didn't come close to my goal time...
Old PR was at 2nd empire in 2006 26:06, my time at this race 25:48 so I beat it by 18 seconds. I really wanted to break 25 minutes, but a number of things I have been dealing with the last two weeks are probably to blame...
anyway
prerace, woke up, felt fine, warmed up a little in the shower and stretched out and put some cream on the ankle so it wouldn't be a factor, and it wasn't, ate my normal prerace breakfast of grapenuts and raisins, relaxed a bit and headed out early. Made it to the race site and got a situated before starting the warmup. I started my warmup jog at 8, ran up the start of the race course to Krispy Kream, then turned around and did a job/strides on the way back to get my body ready for the race. I was a little sluggish on the warmup, but everything felt ok.
race start. I started off near the front so I didn't have too many people to get around and was trying to hold back per Coach's advise, got to Krispy Kream, about .5 miles and my watch said I was on 8:10 pace so I was right on, but then the course started downhill and when I got to the 1 mile split I was at 8:04, still feeling good, but not as confident as I should. the first half of mile two was great, downhill, but then we did a turn around and headed back up. Went by the water table and there was no water, they were a little behind in setting the water on the table, I really just wanted to splash one over my head, but none available, so just kept going. Right after the two mile split, which was 16:30 I knew 25 was out of reach and I saw one guy throwing up on the side walk so I backed off just a bit so as not to end up like him. If I wasn't going to make 25, it wasn't worth it. The road back just kept going up hill, mile 3 wasn't as bad as the second half of mile two as we were back to downtown and the roads were more level with some short ups and downs, then when we finally hit mile 3 and the home stretch, it was all downhill and I was able to fly in at 7 min/mile pace, it felt really good, wish there was a little more of that and a little less of that long climb. I think the old course is better since you get more breaks from the climbing, it's not all down, then all up. On the way to the race I told myself I would be happy even if I didn't break 25 as long as I gave it all I had. I don't think I did that, since I backed off at the 2 mile mark, up to that point I was giving it everything and was still at 16:32 so realistically I don't think the 25:30 I could have gotten if I kept up the faster pace would have been worth it for me and I really need to get my body back to feeling like it should so backing off was probably the right decision. It was nice to have some left for the finish and it felt good to run that fast at that time, so I do have some hope to breaking that 25 but it will have to wait :-)