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Popping in for a quick race report. On Thanksgiving morning Cath and I ran the Gobble Gobble Gobble 4-Miler in Davis Square. It was great being able to just walk out the door and jog 1/2 a mile to the start line.

I had hoped to run this race in under 29 minutes, a 7:15/mi pace. But I didn’t expect it to be as crowded as it was. I was stuck behind people for most of the first mile, resulting in an 8:02 first split. With the crowd the way it was, I decided to take it relatively easy and ran the second mile at 7:30. By the third mile, I was feeling good and picked up the pace, hoping to come in under 30 minutes. Mile 3 went by in 7:18 and mile 4 in 7:10, for a total time of 30:00 exactly.

I was actually pretty happy with this performance, considering the crowd. My last 3 miles were actually faster than my 5k PR, and this beats my previous 4-mile PR by almost 2 minutes.

My running has been pretty inconsistent for the past month or so. I’ve been out of town a lot, and my left knee was bothering me for a while. This past week I finally got back into my normal schedule, and I was planning to run a 5k tomorrow, but it looks like we are getting a Nor’easter instead. I figure pouring rain and winds wouldn’t be conducive to setting a PR, so I probably won’t run it. I’d like to find a goal race for next weekend to try to crack 22 minutes in the 5k.

This week I did two speed workouts. Tuesday I did 6×800m intervals on the track, at times ranging from 3:16 to 3:28. They were very tiring, but I did well. Yesterday I did a 3 mile tempo run at 7:35/mi pace. Again, it was difficult but not terribly hard. “Comfortably difficult,” as they say. I don’t feel as well trained as I did before the Honan 5k, but I am running faster these days and the conditions should be more favorable this time of year.

I’m still unsure what to do over the winter. My original plan was to drop the speedwork and just try to maintain my 25 mpw base, then ramp up the mileage in the spring. Now I’m thinking that maybe I should shoot for a goal race in the spring, maybe even push for that sub-20-minute 5k in April or May. Or I could train for a longer race, maybe a half-marathon. I’ve got the base under my belt, and I don’t think it would be hard to get my current 8-mile long run up to 12 or 14. My fitness is pretty good now, and with some longer training I bet I could run a 1:45 half. We’ll see what happens over the winter.