My last race as a 33 year old!

Today I ran in my second ever track meet and officially my last race as a 33 yr old as my birthday is this coming Tuesday!  I did not have to work the night before but I did have a birthday party the night before so not sure which was worse! Lol!  Since this was a joint party for myself and a friend, I did not exactly hold back.  I had a ton of fun and stayed up quite late but did make sure I did not go overboard (i.e. did not do a repeat of the night before the Centurion! Ha!).  I did get a fair amount of sleep but woke up exhausted and had to pry myself out of bed to make sure I caught the bus to make it to York U for the OMA Ontario Champs.  I decided to run the 3000m again and to see if I could improve.  I was thinking about running a second event but when I realized that my bday party was the night before I decided to just stick to one.  I did a decent warm up but again, did not want to run too much as I wanted to save whatever I could for the run.  I am pretty sure though I could have done a longer warm up and it would not have sucked any extra energy out from me.  This time I had some advise thanks to Duncan and followed a target.  When the gun went off I tucked behind a guy and stuck with him for a while.  And I mean I was right behind him.  He had a good pace and I felt comfortable.  Then I felt as though he was slowing down a bit and another guy had passed us so I decided after a corner to pass him and try to catch the other guy.  I probably should have stuck to the other guy as soon as he passed because I was not able to catch up to him.  But I had my eyes set on him for a good while.  I was so focused on my targets that I had no idea what lap I was at or how long I was running for.  Mind you, 15 laps is also a lot to count which is why there are lap counters for us.  But unlike what I had the last time, my person was not yelling at me the number of remaining laps I had left.  I heard the bell lap but I was unaware it was for me.  I thought there was another person right behind me who was going for their final lap.  I thought I had another one left.  So I was not able to give it my all in my final lap with a finishing kick as I did not realize it was my final lap.  I had another teammate of mine who was taking photographs tell me I was done. I was ready for one more and actually a little disappointed that I did not get to do a finishing kick (my version of it anyway!).  Lol!!!  As I was approaching the finish line I saw the time of 13:35 or something and thought to myself, "boy, I ran slower today...how am I going to run a 30sec 200m!".  Haha!  My finishing time was 13:51 which is 17sec faster than my last run.  Initially, I thought I actually ran 30sec faster and was really ecstatic with that.  Not sure why I thought that but it turned out to be only 17sec faster.  Hmmm....wonder how much I could bring it down if I was able to throw the hammer on the final lap! ;)  I think the pacing really helped me though and I felt pretty comfortable throughout!  I think I may try this again in a couple of weeks and try to run even faster.  I did have a lot of fun today and the encouragement was awesome!!!!  Thanks!  But I am also losing my voice right now at work again accompanied by a nice cough.  Guess I can't avoid that with indoor track running.