Rocked Out a 5k Run on Saturday!

It was cold and very lightly snowing big, down feather like flakes when I hit the road. I dressed warmly in layers, I had my iPod for tunes and the Garmin on my wrist. I stretched some and warmed up walking around the driveway for a little bit. Finally I walked over to my mail box so that it would be my lay point, hit start, and started to jog. Around the block, out towards the main road, back in, and back to the mailbox was approximately 1 mile. Around the 2 mile mark I decided that it was the day to attempt 5k, or 3.1 miles with out stopping.  According to the Nike+ app I had previously on my iPod the furthest I've run with out stopping was 2.8 miles and its' accuracy was suspect. Just after that running got harder, my lungs protested, my legs felt heavy, I almost let myself give up. But I pressed on, telling myself it doesn't have to be a fast time I just needed to do it. I must have settled into a good rhythm again. My breathing regulated and my strides felt more comfortable. I saw my mailbox coming up and knew mile 3 was almost complete. Of course a bunch of my neighbors were outside now, I waved as I went by and forgot to hit the Lap button. Oh well. Only a .10th of a mile to go now! It got suddenly got hard again, I could feel a stitch coming on in my right side, breathing getting a little ragged, legs tired. I started talking out loud to myself, "You can do this!" "You can do ANYTHING for 1 minute and that's all you have left!" "You can do it, you can do it, you can do it!" "Keep pushing!" I kept glancing down at the Garmin, I thought that last .01th would never tick by! It finally did, I hit Stop, and slowed to  a walk. When I finally looked at the Garmin to check my time I nearly fell over when I saw 31:58! According to the Nike+ app I was running 12 min miles, meaning the fastest I could have completed 5k would have been 36+ mins. The Garmin puts me at a little over 10  min miles! Wow just wow. I've never ran a 10 minute mile in my life before! And I just ran three in a a row. I grinned all the way back to the house and for the rest of the day. In fact I still grin when I think about it!