Race Report - 2010 Monte Sano 5/10K

The alarm went off at 6AM this morning, early enough to brew my morning coffe and get my body going. I was able to convince Richard to join me for these two road races as a replacement for our weekly speed work. We arrived at Monte Sano State Park at 7:30AM and the 10K was scheduled to start at 8AM. It was really a perfect morning for a run. With temps in the mid 50s I was actually a little chilly. Wow, I hadn't experienced that for a long time. Richard wanted to run consistent. I, on the other hand, am not familiar with that concept. Surprise, surprise I wanted to go for a PR, instead. Well, it didn't quite work out that way, but it was still a great day of running. I lined upin the third row at the start. I could tell it would be a very fast race today, lots of familiar fast runners in the two front rows. I just wanted to settle into my goal pace quickly and hold on to the finish. I did manage to find my goal pace in the second mile after going out a little toquickly in the first, but I dropped off ever so slighly with each following mile so that I missed a PR by quite a bit. However, the race was a lot of fun with two miles of trails thrown into a 2 loop road race. I finished 39th out of 390 runners, which was quite respectable even if I missed a PR.
The 5K would be run on the same course but as a single loop instead. It started a 9:30AM and I was really contemplating just jogging it instead of racing it. However, once I toed the starting line my competitive nature took over, again. While I knew I didn't have enough left in the tank to PR or to push for placement, I did want to push nonetheless. When the race was started, my legs felt like lead for the first 200 yards and the only thing getting me to pick up my pace was the flow of runners around me. After half a mile into the race, my legs were loose and I was able to run again. I didn't break any speed records, but I found out later on the results page on the web that I was actually 24th overall out of 220 male runners (25th overall out of 430 runners) and 1st in my age group. I think this was only my second ever first place finish in running any race. Not too bad for a day of back to back road races that were meant as training runs.