To accurately specify the distance for this race, one would need an "ultra-5k"category :) It appeared that the first turn-around point was misplaced so the distance turned out to be roughly 3.3 miles rather than the usual 5k. Until you realized that it was long, this made the final times seem pretty discouraging.
When I woke up and heard the rain, I was very tempted to simply sleep in and take a "raincheck" on the race. However, I knew that Dwayne was planning on running and realized that the ribbing associated with missing the race would be far worse than the weather, so "over the creek and through the woods to St. Mary's I did go" (I couldn't work in "river" despite the recent rains and our Thursday evening "bivouac" :). The rain mostly stopped for the race so the weather was actually pretty reasonable. Besides, my shoes were still wet from Thursday so, from their perspective, rain was not an issue!
My plan was to take the first uphill mile fairly easy, accelerate on the second mile, and hang on for the third. That mostly worked although the start was a mess. At the last minute, a huge number of runners entered the starting chute at the entrance rather than end which, when combined with the very narrow chute, led to an extremely congested start. It actually took me longer to reach the start than it did at the Richmond marathon which had over 3700 runners. This also meant that the first 200 meters or so were also very congested and it wasn't until about 1/4 mile in that I felt like I was finally running smoothly.
The congested start also meant that final placings were off since they were based on guntimes rather than chiptimes. In my case, this made a difference of three overall places and and coming in second in my agegroup rather than first.
For those who have not run this course, it is very simple. After turning onto Hillsborough Street, you run up it for around a mile, turn around and run to the capital, reverse again and return to St. Mary's. Whereas the two turning points slow you down, this does give you a chance to see everyone twice which allows you to see who is ahead of you and provides an opportunity to cheer on RRO teammates.
I could not get a Garmin lock so I was unable to get accurate mile splits. However, modulo the crazy start, I was happy with my pacing throughout the race. However, it also felt sufficiently close to "red-lined" to remind me that I really need to do more speedwork for competitive 5k's (I've been in marathon mode for the last couple of months). In my agegroup, the top three runners were within 10 seconds which reiterated the need for more speedwork.
Great job to all the RRO folks who ran this race! The team was very well represented in both numbers and performances.
