Skeeter Run 5k - race recap

My girlfriends and I decided a few weeks ago that we would do a girl's day/night out. The original plan was to head away from town for the weekend but we decided to save money on rooms and stay local. Once the date was picked things fell into place and the day's events were decided.

We started our day with a little local 5k race called the Skeeter Run 5k- Imagine No Malaria. Of course by the sounds of the name you can determine where proceeds were going. Great cause! We all signed up and that was how our Girl's Day/Night out began.

This was the same course as another local 5k race that runs here in July. An out and back on Neyland Drive in Knoxville. It's pretty flat and a location that I've ran many times. I wasn't worried about the course. Actually I wasn't really concerned about the race at all other than the fact that I had raced/ran hard the weekend before and it was much warmer and humid this weekend than last, but I would succeed.

There was an early packet pick up so I took advantage of that on Friday evening after work.

We did our 2 mile warm up, a few leg swings and used the port-o-potties before lining up for the 8am start and we posed for our first Girl's Day/Night out pic of the day.

 I was already a hot sweaty mess but felt as ready as I could to run. My race plan had me set to start the first mile at 8:20 pace. I went out a bit fast and much to my dismay had to even stop to tie my shoe that had come untied. Grr. Even so I pulled out mile 1 with an 8:06.

Mile 2 was hard for me. I was mentally not in it after the shoe tying fiasco and did not hit my goal pace of 8:10-8:15. I walked at the water stop (which for me is dumb since it was an easy 5k) and ended mile 2 with an 8:47, much slower than my 5k pace. Bummer.

Once in mile 3 I felt back in the game but was still hitting it slower than I needed to be. I could tell looking at my Garmin that if I just pushed I could possibly get a 5k PR.  Mile 3 was 8:18.

Not at all my best 5k performance. My Garmin read 25:21 which would have been a 30 second PR however, the distance read 3.03. Unfortunately on a short course (certified or not) it just doesn't count. In my mind I want it to but reality is I just did not run 3.10. If I was to do the math I think I could still have pulled off a slight PR even if I had ran the .06 missing, but oh well.

Even though I was disappointed I was still happy considering I spent :39 seconds stopped to tie my shoe. Just how does it take that long to tie a darn shoe!?
 I had convinced myself that 25+ minutes was just to slow for any awards and was focused on what else the day would hold for fun but imagine my shock when they called my name for 2nd place female in my age group (30-34)!?

I'm not the only one in my little circle of friends that won some bling! Check out my awesome friends....

So, despite the short course we were obviously all very happy with our performances!

Tell me:
Do you count a PR even if the course is short? Or do you accept it for what it actually is and set out to achieve the goal the next time?