Fri 8/23 - PM 60 minutes incl. 5 mile road race

This seemed like a good idea when I signed up for it a while back. Had it not been on the docket I might have taken the rest of the week off from running. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. From an athletic tourism perspective it was an interesting area to race although getting to this neck of the woods is more of a pain than I'd like. Did a relatively thorough warmup, no idea what pace would be appropriate or sustainable. Tried to be somewhat conservative early on, thought I'd picked a pace that was doable but found out otherwise soon enough. First slightly downhill mile went in 5:20, next flat mile in 5:40, then 5:44 slightly up at which point I was starting to feel the effort weighing me down. Thought I was in no-man's land by the halfway point but slowed right down into getting passed by two more people as the fourth mile went in 5:55. The only hill of any consequence (debatable really) was in the last mile and I realized coming off of it that I could get one of the lost places back. Thus motivated I finished with a stirring and given the context of the race fairly embarrassing sprint to the line which brought the final mile in just under 5:50. Without the sprint that last mile would have been a lot closer to six minutes. Disturbing how substantially I slowed in the second half of the race and even more so, the fact that the effort felt just as taxing as it did early on. I'm wondering whether I might be deficient in something other than sleep, hopefully not. Right hammie hung in okay during the race but started to stiffen afterward right on schedule. Cooldown was brief as I had to hit the road. Still somewhat sticky but humidity not as high as earlier in the week.