Dave's Addiction

Woohoo! I finally won this blasted race. Ten years of getting edged to second or third but not today. The first mile I felt like I was running through molasses but I didn't dare push it any harder in case somebody was planning a move on the back side. Turned out I just felt slow, but I wasn't really - came through in 5:23. The first mile is a loop around the low part of the course back past the start line, but the second mile is a steady uphill with a nasty into the wind three blocks, so it was a very respectable 5:57. By the beginning of the second mile I couldn't hear anybody behind but as I made the turn into the wind tunnel I could see the second place guy only 200 feet back so still a danger. But the tunnel nuked him and I didn't even really feel it! Usually I get knocked back to 7 but today nothing slower than 6:20. The third mile is a crosswind slight downhill and that was good for a 5:45. Then I made the turn into the finish area, .15 to go downhill and downwind which I ran at a 4:23 pace because it looked like I was going to grab a 5K PR. Missed it by 2 seconds, but it's a course PR 17:34 and the real PR was extrapolated from an actual finish so this is really my strongest performance ever. They finally made this race an actual exact 5k too so that was nice.