70F/85% -> 75F/80%. Some ridiculous thunderstorms last night came through and hung around until right before the race started. We got off to a bit of a late start, but the storms made things cooler than they would have been otherwise - looks the dew point stayed below 70, although it was increasing throughout the race. Leftover t-storm wind was an issue on one of the legs (3/4-mile homestretch) but not too terrible, maybe 10-15 mph.
I really liked the format - it's mostly a relay race, so there are teams of 5, the course is 5 x 5k laps, and each lap has 2 different out-and-backs so you're never more than a mile from the starting line. Only about 60 of us bozos did it as a solo 25k. I definitely didn't mind the monotony of the loops and kind of enjoyed keeping tabs on each 5k time and getting encouragement from the crowds near the start.
The race plan actually went just like I'd envisioned for once, with progressively faster 5k's, and overall faster than I thought would be possible given the temperature. The guy that won already had an insurmountable lead after the first lap, and there was no one close behind me, so I was able to relax and go by feel. Splits:
20:18, 20:00, 20:02, 19:57, 19:20.
Laps 3 and 4 both had a 10-15 second stop to re-fill my bottle, so it was probably a near-perfect progression, even though the sun came out in full force for the last 4-5 miles. Last thing to note is mile 15 was my fastest full mile (6:06) and the last ~1/2 mile+ was at 5:50 pace, so a really strong finish. Pretty solid result in my first road race of the year.
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