It snowed all day Friday and dropped 9 inches of snow at home. The temp was 15 degrees in the morning when I left for the race about 20 minutes away in Smithfield. The race didn't start until 10 am and the sun came out and there was no wind so it felt nice even though the temps were still in the lower 20s. The only problem was that the roads were all covered in snow and ice. I haven't ever raced on roads like this but do a lot of training runs all winter on them and usually figure it costs around 30 to 60 seconds per mile on a training run depending on how slick it is. This course is the toughest of any 5K races I have run because of some large hills with nothing flat the whole way. Plus the course is long. My previous 2 times at this race have been 19:47 and 19:49 so without the slick roads I was just hoping for a sub 19:30. With the conditions we had today I wasn't sure I could even break 21 min. After running a warm up out the last mile of the course and finding it completely icy and slick I decided to go with some heavy thick soled trainers that I had put 9 or 10 hex head screws into the bottom of each shoe instead of my light weight racing flats. The race starts right out climbing about 150 ft in the first .6 of a mile. I had 5 boys running ahead of me up the hill with Conner M from the blog in the lead. The traction wasn't bad going up the hill as we were able to mostly run single file in the tire ruts where the snow had been melted from the traffic that morning. By the time we got to the top of the hill I had passed 4 of the others. Conner was already way ahead. After turning the corner at the top of the hill you continue to climb but much more gradually for the rest of the mile. The road hadn't been that bad yet and I would have much rather been in my racing flats for that mile. I finished in 6:41 which was actually faster than I had run it other years. Mile 2 starts downhill steep for .3 and you quickly drop most of the altitude you gained in the first mile then the next half mile is uphill again gaining about 70 feet. before dropping again for the rest of the mile. The roads during this mile were getting worse and it was getting harder to find non icy spots to run on and a lot of stretches there were none. time was 6:18. Mile 3 is all gradual downhill until near the end of it. This is the fast mile where you can gain back some time lost on those hilly first 2 miles. Today though this mile was almost all on ice. I was very glad now that I had worn the trainers with screws. They helped a lot but I still ended up way slow for this mile. I ran it in 6:16 but under normal conditions I've been around 5:50. The last .16 is uphill and I ran it in 55 seconds [5:46 pace]. I hadn't seen Conner since he turned the corner just before mile 2 and the next guy behind me had been back a ways since the end of the first mile so I was alone most of the race. I finished 2nd overall in 20:10. That was the first time I have run a 5k over 20 minutes since the first two I ran 6 years ago. Today though under the conditions I feel good about the time and if the course were the right length my time would have been comfortably under 20 anyway. A lot of people ended up a couple of minutes slower than their normal times.
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