Knoxville Marathon

I ran a 5k today in Knoxville and even though it was my 5th one it was my first one since maybe August and I was really nervous about it.  You see my dad has been running theses races for about a year and a half or so now and he's getting really good.  He's almost 50 years old and he's whittling his time down to about 26 minutes.  My personal record is only 24 minutes so I was worried that he would easily pass me.  I had slightly forgotten that we were doing it until about a week ago so last Sunday was my first attempt to train for a race since the summer.  I didn't really struggle in my training but at the same time I didn't feel like I could just go bust out my personal recored like it was nothing.

So yesterday dad comes up and he gets us a hotel so that we can be as close to the race site as possible.  We hydrate and eat the best ways we know how to be prepared and we get to bed early with about 1,000 alarms being set.  Long story short, dad got kind sick and didn't feel like he ran his best and I finished in 24:30.  Which I was fairly pleased with but after thinking about it, I think I could have done much better.  When I got close to the finish line I started sprinting.  I have 2 goals in running.  I would like to shave my time down to 20 minutes or below and also push myself to my max while running.  Even though I felt tired when I ran today and had the mental block to want to stop, I shouldn't have been able to sprint at the end.

It's sort of funny that I feel like I'm pushing myself throughout a race like that and at the end I realize that I hadn't really pushed like I should have.  It makes me wonder how hard I really could push and still make it through.  Obviously I'm not in tip top shape but I feel like with some work I could get there quickly.  So why do I have that "false glass ceiling"?  How much faster could I have ran?  I don't want to test it out on a race day and just fall out but I am interested in the idea of pushing to my limits without losing any weight and then what I could push to after I lost weight.  So my new goal is to push myself in my training until I feel like I am closer to my max performance.

If anyone has any tips please let me know and next time I post maybe I'll be talking about my sub 20 performance.