This was the third consecutive year I’ve run this race. It’s one of my favorites during the three months I spend in Florida each year. I like the course, the race organization, and the post-race festivities. This year’s race was even more special for three reasons: I met another fellow RW forumite, Luci Dahl, for the first time; FrankS of the Merv forum was there; and I improved on my race performance of the past few weeks.

 

The course is a bit unusual. It circles a park twice around a loop that is exactly 1.5 miles long, plus an additional .107 mile to the finish line just inside the park. Thus, the 1,2 and 3 mile markers double as 0.5, 1.5 and 2.5 mile markers, which provides 1/2 mile splits. A numbers guy like me gets twice as much data to work with during the race. J

 

The race day weather was warm and humid....very much like the previous two. My goal for this race was simple....improve on my disappointing performance of the previous two weeks. That meant starting a bit more conservatively. I even mentioned to Frank before the race that I would run it as a tempo run, if necessary. However, I really did want to run 26-something.

 

My time was 27:03 (8:42/mile ave pace) with splits of 8:39, 8:53, 8:38 and :53 (8:13 pace) for the last 0.107 mile. Still not quite as fast as I would have liked and I really struggled for the last mile. But it was a much better paced race than I have run in a month. Of course, it was also just a 5k, whereas my last 3 races have been 10-15k’s in which my pace went to hell in the second half. Tomorrow’s longer race will be a better test.

 

I very much enjoyed meeting Luci, who was running her first race, and her husband, Mike....a very nice young couple. We chatted for a few minutes before the race and hung together afterwards. Of course, it’s always good to see Frank. I even got him to have a beer with me at the awards ceremony, but it took a bit of cajoling. J

 

Jim2

 

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