One of my friends from church told me about a 5k scheduled for Sunday. Since the registration was only $25 I thought I would go for it and help support a worthy cause - 100% of the fees go to families who are battling cancer. Plus the start was at the high school right across from our neighborhood, and the route was along my usual path.
The temperature was right at 50 degrees when I left the house to walk over to the school. It was a pretty good sized crowd of several hundred, a high percentage of them being students. I registered and then waited with my friends for the start. I left the line pretty slow, which wasn't surprising since I've been running ten-minute-plus miles for the greater part of the year. The bad thing was I felt like I was running fast, which is never a good sign. Nevertheless I kept the pace in the mid-nines.
After the turnaround I added on to my pace and felt good about it. I passed my friend and did my usual negative split, picking off people all the way to the finish line. When I turned the last corner in the school parking I cranked into a higher gear and left the people around me in the dust. It was a good feeling.
By my watch I finished in 27:15. Not blazing fast, but not bad for a guy pushing 50 and who hasn't done any serious speed work in a long time. The results haven't been posted yet so no idea how I fared in my age group. Still, it was fun to run a race pretty much on a whim.
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