Probably the smallest 5K I've ever seen. Only 40 people, and 10 of those were walkers. Still, it was a good race for me. Out of the top 10 runners, only 3 of us were over 20. The first 2 were a couple of guys from out of town. The rest were high school cross country runners.

Wanted to start off pretty easy, but the adrenaline of my first run-only race in about 9 months got the best of me. Managed to throttle back a little bit after the first 200 yards or so. Found a high schooler that had a nice pace and latched on about 20 yards behind him.

Since this is a training race for the 15K next month, I had two goals - keep a good pace, catch and pass someone in the last mile.

Main goal was just to keep a consistent pace the first two miles and try to make the third mile the fastest. First mile was 7:07. 2nd mile was 7:23. Last 1.1 was 7:36, which is about a 6:48 mile pace. 2nd was a little slower than I wanted, but it was also in the hilly part of the course.

Felt pretty good as I left the park and turned back down the hill, so I sped my pace up. Noticed the high school kid was looking winded, so I decided to make a move and see what he was made of. Pulled even with him, flashed a smile and said something like "Good job kid", then took off.

First race in new shoes and I forgot to double knot. Right shoe came untied at the 2 mile mark. Ignored it and kep going. Maybe I could have gone a little faster and broken 22. Who knows?

Walked around for a bit and had a Powerade. Then walked out to meet Shannon and jog her in. She had a tough race, still trying to get back into shape.


Shoe coming untied was the only bad thing. Otherwise I did exactly what I hoped for.


Pretty good day for us overall. I took first, Shannon was third in Female 20-29, and Mom trophied as the first Female Walker.

Reminding myself that this was just a training race, but still, winning something makes training a lot more fun.