**This race has a big asterisk in front of it**

The timing was all kinds of wonky. The RD gave me an 18:32 and my teammate a 17:31 which was close to what the clock read when we crossed. I asked him if it was completely accurate and he said yes. But the he said that the course was not certified. I checked out their map that had it at 3.12 meaning it was long. But then they did a weird adjustment which put me at 19:37 later in the week and then 19:31. Soooo, I don't know. He swore that first time was accurate. And in mile 1 I had a 5:56 split. So, who knows. Ironically it seems that both times I have "broken" (or did I?) 19, there was a timing snafu. NBD at this point since it was more a piece of training and a fitness check in (19:30-18:30 mean that I haven't lost the ability to move my legs) But I'm claiming that 18:32 since the RD swore. I think he even pinky swore :)

Anyway, all that being said, here are the more important deets:

I lined up a little back from K (one of my CNW teammates.) She's a 16:xx 5K runner and I knew upon her arrival I was racing for second. I mean, unless she tripped and fell or like, got hit by a rogue ice-cream truck or something.

A young runner sang the National Anthem and it was really, really good! Once she finished they counted down and we were off! There was a super intense looking woman wearing an Oiselle kit that might pose a threat so I went ahead and started strong (but not overly fast.) We had to go about 100 yards then do a 180 at a cone, which is kind of a pain. Once we turned the cone it was a nice long straightaway.

https://youtu.be/rRBwbU8Q9CIvideo of us going through turn

There were 2 additional women in front of me once we got around the corner (other than K) I didn't panic but kept a close eye on them. I didn't want them to get too far out. I tried to keep my pacing nice and even. Not accelerating or decelerating on the hills, just keeping a nice solid effort.

At about mile 1 I passed one of the women. A man next to me called out the pace at 5:56.

I quickly reeled in the other woman who kind of faded suddenly. The 556 dude was running right next to me almost to mile 2 where there was an uphill before we descended a small hill to the turnaround. I passed him on the "up" then maintained the distance on the down and slowed for the turnaround (another180) where I was afraid he may catch me, but I think I put a little more distance between he and I back "up" the hill.

The road flattened out for the most part again and I approached a young man. I passed him and upon being passed he accelerated and passed me. But he couldn't hold it and faded quickly. I thought about encouraging him to stick with me but I was starting to strain quite a bit. We were in the full sun and it was getting pretty warm out.

It was about here I heard someone yell my name. I scanned the runners headed towards me and saw who it was. I struggled to make the connection and then it came to me, it was my bosses boss. lol it's funny when you see people out of the context you usually do. I waved and kept running.

We had to pass the finish turn off (booooo) and then go around that damn cone again and then back, up a hill and into the parking lot of the high-school. I tried to maintain as much speed as possible around the 180 (wasn't overly successful) and pushed hard up the finishing hill and through the finish.

It was a pretty solid race.

For max performance I would taper, not run quite as long of a warmup.

I grabbed some water then headed back down the course to find my boss. She was pushing a stroller with her new baby. We ran/walked back towards the finish and then I cut out so as to not get counted twice by the timing device (hmmmm I wonder if this may have caused issues?)

They did and awards (I got a gift card for new shoes and cash!) then I grabbed a beer then ran the 5.5 miles downtown to the ferry terminal to meet my friends to head over to the beer festival. Long day but I got a nice 13ish miles out of it!


just a tune-up