Getting ready for the 5K

My last weekend before the Crawfish 5K next Saturday included running up this hill 3 times (I have to say this picture does not do this hill justice as how steep it is to run up) as well as a mile run to and from it yesterday morning:

And today, I ran the 5K course:

On the plus side, it looks like a possibility that I'll beat my previous 5K time of 33:29 (given that I ran .20 miles more than the 5K).  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll meet my secondary goal of doing better than a 10 mile pace.  Guess that will have to wait until the next one.

I decided to give these compression socks a try today:

I heard that they were good for holding everything together as you run and would help prevent shin splints and improve performance.  And goodness knows, I'm down with trying any kind of voodoo to help with my running.  Overall, they were comfortable and it definitely felt like it was holding my legs together but it didn't make me faster.  That said, I'll probably wear them on race day--it certainly didn't hurt to use them.

So I got my runner friends to approve that this would be my last "long" run before Saturday since I'm traveling Wed-Friday.  So glad to get the long run over with (which is probably not a great sign about my running ability.)

Can't believe I found this street here in Columbia

Countdown to the race begins--less than a week to go!