After a three year pause from street races, today, it was time for me to race the streets again. Today I ran the annual firemen run — Cursa Bombers — a 10k race around the center of Barcelona.

As I had not run much in the past few years and was only a month into my current running spree, I had to admit that I was not in the best of shapes. Accordingly, I set myself a non-ambitious goal for today’s race. My plan was to jog it lazily at about ten kilometers per hour and finish the race in about 55 to 60 minutes. That is, I aimed at a new personal worst record — with my previous 10k personal worst at 51:36.

Due to my absence from street racing in the past few years I did not qualify for a place in the first starting group. In a sense that was quite fortunate since it allowed me to get myself a nice spot ahead of most of the crowd in the second starting group. I could thus run the race at my own pace without any serious traffic congestion.

It was nice to be back on the streets. I had forgotten how much fun it is to run with large group of people. It is particularly interesting in the case of Cursa Bombers where there is a strong tradition of wearing the official race t-shirt. Today, it meant that today’s runners — 25 thousand — resembled a purple river running through the city.

Early on I settled into a nice comfortable running pace. To my surprise I was able to maintain a higher pace than I expected. It became clear that it would probably not be able to reach my goal of running the race in about 55 to 60 minuts. It felt too good to be running at a pace below 5:30. Not the least was I pleasantly surprised to be able to maintain an increasing pace throughout the race — with each quarter faster than the one before.

I passed the finishing line after running the 10k in 52 minutes and 45 seconds. I had managed to achieve my goal of setting a personal worst, but I was pleasantly far from my goal of 55 to 60 minutes. Now, I need to extend my current running spree into a prolonged running season and try to attack the other end of my personal record later this summer.