July Running

[skhill]

Saturday was the fund-raising 5k that's known for buying out the trophy store. I wasn't sure about doing it this year, but the weather was fantastic so why not? 68F and the humidity had been knocked down by overnight thunderstorms. Nice. There was a decent crowd, including a high school CC team doing it as a training run. Also spotted Kevin Castille, our awesome world-class master's champion, but he wasn't racing, just doing a training run in the area.

The high school kids were kinda obnoxious at the start line, but they were mostly far ahead of me by the first turn. I did pass one of the girls on the steep downhill just before the end of the first mile (found out afterwards it was her first race after a recent broken rib, so she was taking it easy). Yet again, I was probably too conservative with my pace starting out: the first 2 miles were at 8:25 ish, then I picked it up and accelerated to the end, finishing in 25:45.

So I got one of the many trophies-- a gigantic one, for 2nd in my age group. Cool. And I'm going to work on going faster earlier in races; it's great to be able to go so fast at the end, but I know I can maintain a quicker pace throughout...