Shamrock Shuffle in Smithfield this morning. I looked at the weather report last night and it said snow changing to rain in the morning. This brought back memories of last years race, especially after the race when Paul P Scott E and I went for a cool down run in the blizzard. When I left home this morning it was 28 degrees but by the time the race started at 10:00, it had to be close to 40 deg and sunny. Real nice. This race only costs 4 bucks if you wear green. They had a pretty big crowd this year. I got signed up and ran a 3 mile warm up. This is a pretty tough course without any flat stretches. It starts right out with a big 1/2 mile climb up about a 4% grade then turns and has a nice drop that isn't quite as steep for the rest of the mile. The second mile has a lot of nice downhill. The rest of the race is all uphill. It's mostly a long gradual climb of about 70 to 80 feet and gets a little steeper the last 1/4 mile. I took off up the first hill and was at about a 7 min pace at the top of the climb. I picked it up after the first hill and finished the first mile in 6:26. 2nd mile was 5:51 and I felt like I had a chance to go under 19 min but the next mile uphill was too much and I ran a 6:21. Final .1 was 34 seconds [5:47 pace]. Finished in 19:13. Good for 1st in my age group. I felt pretty good about that time for that course and this time of year. I beat last years time by 26 seconds. I've been getting in a lot more mileage than I was this time last year but nothing faster than marathon pace. Ran another 4 after I got home.
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