The race was held on Saturday, March 7,
at Dunedin, Florida, the morning after we arrived in Florida for a few weeks and only 6 miles from where we were staying on
Clearwater Beach. Dunedin is the spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team, which was one of the race sponsors.
It was run on a flat, loop course that started and ended at the baseball stadium. It meandered through pretty neighborhoods
surrounding the ballpark and included a half mile stretch along the waterfront. Except for a brisk wind and moderately high
humidity, the weather was OK. Low 60's and sunny. The field size was 250.
I ran 26:31 (8:33/mile pace), which is
considerably slower than I had hoped to race this spring and was almost 20 seconds slower than my last 5k in February. My
splits were 8:13 and 8:28 for the first 2 miles and 9:49 (8:55 pace) for the last 1.1 miles. I started too fast, trying to
improve on my last 5k time, but couldn’t hold the pace. I attribute it to two factors....not being acclimated to the
humidity and the fact that it was the first time I had run in two weeks. I lost a lot of training time during February and
early March due to my wife’s surgeries and preparing for the trips to Florida and France. All things considered, I was
satisfied with the results and hoped that a week of running might enable me to improve in the next race.
A nice post race pancake breakfast (my
favorite!) at a Senior Citizens Center across the street from the ballpark was followed by an awards ceremony held outdoors
on shuffleboard courts under a beautiful late morning sunny sky. One thing I quickly learned about Florida running.....there
is a very active Masters running community there with lots of very fast runners in their 50's, 60's and 70's. I guess retirement
in Florida really does work!
A footnote.....this was the 400th
race for one Master’s woman. She started running in 1983. That’s an average of 27 races per year for 15 years!
Oh yeah, the T-shirt. It was a nice
5-color short sleeved shirt featuring baseballs and palm trees in the design. Only problem is that it includes this funny
looking bird called a Bluejay....Orioles are much prettier. J
Jim2
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