I PR'd in this race last year in 18:15, so I was shooting to better that time. A few things led to this not happening.

First, I'm in the early stages of marathon training, and this race was just another run in my plan - very little speed work for a 5k race.

Second, it was freaking cold! Race time temp of 25 with a wind made it feel a lot cooler. I like running in cooler weather, but this was a bit too cool for me. I'm also at the tail end of a cold, and I still had some congestion in my chest - not ideal for racing!

Third, the course was changed a bit from last year, adding a decent sized hill at the end of the course. It felt like this also lengthened the course a bit - about a tenth longer than last year according to my GPS and GPS's of several other runners I talked to after the race.

Looking at times from last year to this year, times were slower by 15-30 seconds across the board. I was 37th last year and this year and 17 seconds slower - a little funny. 10th place this year was 16 seconds slower than last year; 20th was 28 seconds slower, 30th was 17 seconds slower; 40th was 16 seconds slower than last year. I think the 'slower' times were due to the cooler temps and the course change.

As for the race, I didn't quite hit the paces that I wanted. I was shooting to average 5:45, and came in at 5:48 (according to the 3.19 distance that I got on my Garmin).

I was actually pretty happy with my pacing: 5:50, 5:49, 5:48, 5:20 (last .19).

My HR was a bit low for my effort, and that could be possibly attributed to the cold temps.

I'll be doing another 5k with the same race company on this course in March, and at that point I'll be about three weeks out from Boston 2012, and will be hoping to go under 18:00.

Briefly talked with two other guys from my tri team and a few other runners, then jogged back to my car (half a mile away).


Listed above.