I stationed myself in the top third at the start. The first mile I went out about 7:20. There was some maneuvering in the first mile as everyone was trying to find there pace in the beginning.

Between miles one and two I ran approximately at about an 8:10 pace. I passed a couple of runners and was passed by a couple of runners holding my same overall place.

In miles three and four I was running around 8:30 and had a couple of more runners pass me. At this point I was no longer passing runners.

The last mile I slowed significantly. I have no idea what my pace was but I am guessing it was 8:45 to 9:00 mpm. I was just trying to hold off runners as best as I could.

Another thing that made the last half mile difficult was we were now mixed in with the 5K walkers. They were not doing their best to stay to the right and were walking three to four abreast.


I think if I had run even splits I may have had a faster time. I am reasonably certain I would have been more comfortable.

As usual I did little in the way of a warm down. Once I crossed the finish line I sat down with some water. I did a little light stretching and walking to loosen up.

I then went and changed into a dry T-shirt.



Using the McMillian Running Calculator to compare efforts at different distances I am continuing to bring my times down. I will continue to perform speed work on the Treadmill in the middle of the week. As my left knee gets better I would like to move these workouts to the track.

Looking at my pacing it was all over the place. At some point in the near future I would like to get to some negative splits on the flatter courses.

For my first race in a long time I brought my Garmin which has speed and average speed settings. However the watch was set to other and not run. It was hard to reconcile mph to mpm in my head while running.

Before my next Road Race I intend to take the Garmin out with me and run some negative splits using the watch to get the settings correct. I also intend to maybe change my intervals on the Treadmill to reflect negative splits also.


The race was early enough that it was still a comfortable run temperature wise. The course was pretty good with the significant hill in the first mile and a half. The course also kept you out of traffic. The support staff was nice and the park was a nice place to relax. The after race goodies were poor but anything more probably would have cut into the charity money. All in all a nice little race that I would do again.