Will Run For Beer

Yesterday I ran the Blue Point Brewery 5k run for BULA (Better Understanding of Life in Africa).   Let's face it. . .I pretty much ran for the beer :D

I'm actually not a big beer person; I prefer wine, margaritas, all that jazz.

But after a race, I love it :)

So when I was looking up a 5k for last weekend and I saw this one I figured I might as well do it, even if it was mostly just for the "refreshments" afterwards.

Blue Point Brewery and their microbrews are kind of a big deal on Long Island (they distribute to most of the east coast, any of my east coast readers tried a Blue Point Beer?)

Some of the brews have fun names and designs like:

Hoptical Illusion

and 

RastafaRye

Getting back to the actual race, yesterday morning I wasn't sure if I was up for another 5k (I hadn't pre registered), but I decided to just do it for fun and not pressure myself for a PR.

My final time was 21:07 (6:48 pace) 

11/ 142 overall, 4/ 58 F, 3/ 16 Age group

This was still a hard effort for me, and it is the first time I haven't PR'ed since I began racing again in September.  It is also the first time that I've raced on back to back weekends, all my other races were at least a month apart.

My first mile was 6:30 and it felt really good, that is right around the pace I need to hold for a Sub-20 (6:27).  Then at the 2 mile I was just below 13:30 which was a little disappointing to me.  I haven't been wearing my Garmin in the 5ks yet, but I think I will in my next race so I can work on keeping the pace up in that 2nd mile.

Let's get back to the good stuff :D

Afterwards they had 2 tap beers; Toasted Lager and Blueberry Ale

I went for the Blueberry and it was amazing :)

Repp'in a Met's tee in honor of the Subway Series 

and that little orange bracelet meant you could refill as much as you'd like :D

This week I'm going all out in training, most likely two speed sessions and I am going to up the amount of intervals.  I realize I am dying out a bit at the end of these races.   I think I held on pretty good last weekend and I also came into yesterday's race a little fatigued, but I still need to be finishing stronger.  

Since I plan on going all out and hopefully PR'ing on June 5th, I am going to take it easier on that lead up week as a taper.

Any suggestions on what my interval workouts should be this week in order to improve my speed stamina and finish strong?  I've really been making up my training as I go along, but at this point (my body has always liked to hang around the 20:30-21:00 range when in good shape), I need to be extra smart about it to get past this time plateau that I always seem to get stuck at.

 And since this post is half about beer: Have you ever tried a Blue Point Brewery Beer? Have you ever entered a race mostly for the free beer at the end ;)? or if not, would you? :D