First entry in a while...

I've been running for 52 days in a row now (not a single day off). It's strange that when I don't need to run, it is so much easier to consistently do it. My average run is a little over 8 miles in length, although the weekly average is pulled up by some longer things (32.8 miles after getting lost, 24.1 miles with Dave, 22.3 miles to explore a nearby town, and 17 miles to explore another town). Anyways I did a 5K (USATF certified, so its legit) about two weeks ago, and while I did not win, I managed to break a nearly 4 year old PR. My shiny new PR is actually fairly marginal - 16:54.4 vs 16:59.76 - but I managed to pull this off with only a single interval session of six 800s and a total of only 5 weeks of running (prior to this I had taken the entire summer off). There is an 8K in 3 weeks I found that I would like to do, but last year the slowest guy (201 of 201) ran 27:04 (the course is USATF certified -- it's not short). The entry fee is very high ($45) and it specifically says "Do not run this if you cannot run under 30:00." I'm tempted to do it, since I think I can lay down a 27:2x (still last by a very large margin haha), but I think part of the reason I ran a great 5K was specifically because I had no goal in mind. I just went out there, talked to some friends at the beginning, fought my way to the front, and kicked to a PR I didn't even know I was doing. I also know that I will need to do more tempo-style things if I want to run a good 5-mile -- I have enough speed and endurance now that a 5K is not really a problem even if I haven't been doing workouts to get into peak shape. I can almost always fight through it anyways to get within ~20 seconds of my PR. Five miles however still seems scary for me.