Weather was unseasonably gorgeous today. I felt great. No knee soreness, which was a problem two days ago and I felt pretty good about my pace. There was a big turnout. It think they gave out 2000 numbers, though some were for the fun walk. It took a while to get through the crowd in the beginning, but I hit the first mile mark at a comfortable cruising pace and really just felt like I was able to stay at a steady effort throughout.
They didn't call out pace times, so I really have no idea, but I felt as though I handled my pace well. I had just enough left in me to finish with a strong pace and nothing left when I crossed the line. Based on my two recent 5k's at about 7:35 pace, I expected to finish at 7:45 pace, so I was very happy to discover I finish about 10s per mile faster. I'm sure this very flat course helped.

Come to find out, by some odd stroke of chance, I placed third in my age group. Turns out I was the 35th of 708 females, which was way better than I would have thought. It's almost like I'm starting to become a runner. This is totally surreal. Two years ago I couldn't make it a 1/2 mile in a jogging-shuffle without breaking to a walk.

Stretched and got a beer. Red Hook was one of the race sponsors - yum!