A 5k on a rainy morning, what other way to celebrate Valentine's Day weekend. This was one of the races out at the Bangor Sub Base, but a different course from the Turkey Trot I've run there. Smaller crowd, too (probably because they weren't raffling away turkeys, or anything else. Boooo.) Looking around I didn't recognize anyone who would be at the top, the high school runners apparently sleep in until track season starts. Good for me, I guess. Mike and I arrive a little late, so we just got about 2 miles of warm-up in. Probably enough, at least I hoped. We kind of chatted right before the gun, planning to hit a few six-minute miles and see what happened.
I took off and got a lead right away, with Mike on my shoulder. We lead the way for just short of a mile, I'd guess, but the course wasn't marked at all (or not accurately, because the two mile markers we did see were so far off -- I know we weren't on four-minute pace -- that they seemed to be for some other event entirely). So one guy moved ahead at five minutes or so, he looked alright so we just stuck within 10 feet of him and let him pull. Felt great though, the first ten minutes zipped by and both of us had plenty left. I left Mike soon after that point, just slowly crept away to stick with the first place guy. Then on a slight uphill around 13 minutes I felt him tire, so I went for it and separated with 20 steps or something. It went quickly. I felt great, started to push the pedal a little more there to wrap it up, since I knew I was within minutes. Here's where my guilty conscience is, however. There's a right turn near the end that I took, and a slight hill. Headed up the hill there was a chalk arrow on the right-hand sidewalk, so I figured I was to stay on that side of the street. At the turn I thought was headed toward the finish I kind of noticed marks on the left hand side indicating a small loop around a submarine memorial, but also saw one pointing right, just around the corner. A little confused, I yelled to the Marine who was directing race traffic. He pointed right, so I turned there, headed through the parking lot to the track and finished. Felt great, actually had plenty of energy left when I hit the line. The guy I passed was 20 seconds back.
But, it turns out the Marine screwed up. Me and the top ten or so all turned, when we should have looped the memorial. It would have only been another 75 yards or so, but still, I feel bad. They didn't DQ me, and everybody's Garmin odometers had the course at 3.12 to 3.14. So I'll call it an honest 5k, which feels good because that's the fastest one I've run in years. 2010 continues to offer a lot of promise.
Then a 2.5 cool down with Mike and Justin, it was pouring by that time (rain actually held off during the race). The awards ceremony took like an hour, it was ridiculous. supernova glide -- 280
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