PM - easy 5 miles around the office park at lunch. Race this evening - Midnight Run. PM - late. So this year's Midnight Run 5k was actually a reasonably good effort for me despite the seemingly ponderously slow time. That part was a bit perplexing. I honestly felt really pretty solid most of the race. First mile was consciously conservative but I was not holding back much. That mile was 6:03. I felt like I held the same pace in the second mile, but probably lost a few seconds on the 180 degree turn-around. That turned out to be 6:13. I raced well actually - moving up and passing runners throughout the race. Somehow I lost time over the drawbridge despite feeling like the effort was at least the same or a little stronger than the first 2 miles. Passed several runners in the last mile and except for one who got me back in the final stretch, I had no one pass me. I really expected to see mid 18's on the clock when I headed to the finish. So - not a great time but finished 1st in my age group. Connected with Doug at the start and chatted with him after the race as he walked to his car to change shirts - he was doing the 10k as well. Very humid night by the way 91%. Shirts were literally drenched as if we had been swimming. Turns out Doug finished 2nd in our age group on a very conservative effort by him - knowing he was going to be doing the 10k afterwards as a progression workout- which I see from the race results showed that he finished in 47 mins - Nicely done. Good crowd for the event again - somewhere in the range of 1200 runners in the 5k and 500 or so in the 10. Did a short cool down - thought about running with Doug in the 10 for a brief moment, and then thought better of it.
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