I just went and looked a little more closely at the St. Patrick’s Day 8K standings and decided to compare them to the previous three years I ran the race. Specifically, how I finished in comparison to those in my age group; the first year was a 25-29 age group, but it’s been 30-34 since then.

2003: 379/379 (oh good lord)
2004: 512/513 (hey, I beat someone in my age group this time…)
2005: 305/368 (82nd percentile)
2006: 294/469 (62nd percentile)

If that isn’t an eye opener, I don’t know what is. I certainly feel a lot better about Sunday. (Not that I felt bad, you know… but certainly less than jazzed.) If I could finish one above the halfway point in my age group I’d be stoked. Sadly that may very well not happen until I shift into a slightly less competitive age bracket, but you never know. I mean, hell, I was last in my bracket in 2003. So I’m stoked about this.

(Here’s the funny thing—for a bit I was thinking, “Well, maybe it was just that there were more people.” So I took my pace from last year’s 10K and figured out my finishing time for an 8K. That would’ve been a 48:52, which would have made me 386/469 instead… or 82nd percentile, the exact same as last year. Ha!)