New goals

Since last winter, I had the goal of speeding up my 5K pace to an average of 8 minutes per mile. I came very close with my last 5K, which had an average of 8:07 per mile. (That was actually my fastest mile time in high school, so I'm happy to see that I'm in better shape now than I was then.)

I'm confident that if I had been able to continue running throughout August and September, I would have been able to reach the 8-minute mark. That didn't happen, though, so I'm re-setting that goal for next year. For now, I need the time to rest and recover from whatever is wrong with my shins. If I let myself recover fully, I should be able to slowly get back into running over the winter and build up safely to the half-marathon in May.

I'm not going to think about a plan for reaching the 5K goal pace yet. I think that the half-marathon training will give me the base I need, and then I can work on that elusive goal-pace next summer, or even next fall.