Today I had the honor and pleasure of running with my friend, Rich, who is an incredibly accomplished (read: FAST!!!) runner. He's sponsored by Powerbar, has been in Runner's World, and was one of four men selected to compete in The Greatest Race on Earth. I've never, ever run with him before because his race speeds are roughly 3 minutes/mile faster than mine. (read: I'm terrified to run with the man). We decided to run a new 5K because it worked better for our schedules and the "cost" of registration was a bag of non-perishable food for a good cause. I should say that I've never really raced a 5K before. And, after a 6 month running hiatus I'm not in the best shape I've ever been. But, I'm one of those "If you shoot for the moon and miss, you fall among the stars" people. So, I took my 10K PR from last September and using a pace calculator thought I should shoot for 7:5x mile splits. Rich was willing to pace me, so let's see what happened. Some facts:
1. I finished 4th overall for women
2. I finished 1st overall for my age group
3. My 5K PR (from my 10K PR split) still stands at 24:30 even
This means that I ran slower than my goal, but that's ok because I had a blast and I can accurately gauge where my training is and how I'll improve in the future. Running with Rich also allowed me to learn from him (he thinks I should keep running after the top of a hill when I practice hill repeats because I peter out, and that I should practice strides at the end of my long runs because I had NO kick left at the end today). I also have a newfound respect for the man's speed... let's just say by the time I hit two miles, had he been racing and not pacing, he would have been done already! That is so amazing! And what a very nice person to pace me on a rainy, humid morning.
What did I get from today? Training tips and hardware (which will be mailed to me since they mixed up our bibs so they thought I was the third male finisher). I didn't PR or come close. I didn't have as strong of a race as I would have liked. But I had fun and I hope there will be lots of room for new PRs in my future 
Wow, Kat, thats awesome! Congrats on such a stellar performance. Its great to see that you can take the time to be happy with where you are at compared to where you were and to also be competitive with yourself and want to keep improving--what a great attitude!