Race Report: St. Patty's Day 5k

Every year Colorado Springs has a St. Patrick's Day parade and before the parade is a 5k race downtown. This was the 25th running of the race and about 1400 folks participated. On the training schedule was a 50-60 minute run. The TNT team and I met at 8am not too far from the race start for our group workout. Instead of running the full workout, I did 30 minutes easy to warm up then headed over to the race start. I wanted to run strong, but not all out, especially in the base phase of my training. I figured a good tempo run would be OK.

So here's the report:
Start time: 10am, mostly cloudy and temps in the 30s (we got a few inches of wet snow yesterday, but this time of year it all melts rather quickly. Thanks goodness roads were dry.)
I was pretty cold, but being that it was a St. Patricks Day race, I wore my Jack Quinn's Running Club shirt and this fantastic green felt leprechaun-type hat I found at Walgreens.
The race was flat for Colorado standards, but heading south is clearly downhill (and all the runners that took off way to fast realize that) and heading north is definitely uphill (and those same runners really felt that!).
My time: 25:07, which is about an 8:04 minute/mile pace. That's my best 5k time in Colorado! (best overall was last November at 23:34 in New Orleans....really flat and sea-level, plus a definite taper.) I didn't want to go faster than 7:45 pace on the downhill parts and tried to keep as close to 8:00min/mile on the uphill sections. With an 8:04 average pace, I was just slightly slower than that. My T pace is about 8:20 min/mile and my I pace is 7:40min/mile so I did get a strong training run in. (Those paces are from Daniel's Running Formula, based on a mile time-trial I did a few weeks ago). Oh- and that time put me 15/135 in my age group and 72/792 overall females. So not too shabby!
My post-race recovery was some stretching, a bottle of Recoverite, half a banana and a couple bagel halves from Panera (Cinnamon Crunch and Banana Pecan) that were provided to racers.
Overall for not wanting to go all out I did OK, especially with a full week of training and no taper for the race. My right hip has been a bit tight and I certainly felt the hipflexor/abductors. Planning on a massage this week for sure!