Ran the Elizabeth Haddon 5k this morning. First race in a long time.
I won this race two years ago in a personal record of 18:01. It was a combination of having a good day and the fact that there weren't any sub 18:00 runners in the crowd. Race report here and a subsequent entry here on what it meant to finally break my old high school record at 29. I didn't get to defend my title last year because I flew up to Maine to run the Sugarloaf Marathon instead.
I knew going into today that I was not going to win the race. Now in my thirties, I knew it would also be a struggle just to place in my age group. Because it's a suburban neighborhood 5k, it's made up mostly of kids and their parents. Few people in their twenties run the race, which made it easy to win prizes in the last several years. Today my competition was all the young dads in the crowd.
They let all of the elementary kids start at the very front in this race, which must be fun and exciting for them, but it certainly makes it chaotic when all of the faster runners try to get ahead without trampling them.
The race wound through suburban streets with people sitting on their front lawns spectating. Like most 5k's, I was pushing myself and thinking it would never end, but when I look back on it it feels like it was over in a flash. Makes it hard to write race reports about 5k's.
At any rate, I can't find the race results anywhere online, but I glanced at them briefly when they posted them after the race. The winner finished in roughly 15:30, and I finished in 20:02, good for 9th overall and 3rd in my age group, though they only gave prizes to 1st and 2nd in each age group.
Maybe I should stage a 2014 comeback and reclaim my title!?
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