The race was held in Rehoboth beach, which is niuce and flat, and for once wasn't windy! After the success of last weekend I figured this field would be a lot stronger and that times would be lower. Right in some ways, wrong in others. Good news was this WAS a true 5k, and not a 3.2 mile race like last week. And there were no surprise hills on this course! ;)

Same routine as last week. Warm up for about 15 minutes and stretch. No chip again, so I start near the front of the pack again. There seemed to be an awful lot of young runners and they looked serious (read ...... x-country team kids). Great, no hope of doing well overall. Maybe do well in Age Group though. Gun goes and we're off.

A group of around 6 go off the front comprised of a bunch of the x-country kids and a 25 yr. old Wake Forest alum (who I later found out was a 4:08 miler - it was obvious he was going to be the winner). Then there was me ..... and about 10 yards back a group of other runners.

I'm kind of sitting there in no man's land knowing I can't run with the big dogs up front and not wanting to go too fast or to be alone, so I back off a tick. Two guys my age pass me and I ramp back up to pace with them. First mile split was 6:02, similar to last weeks first mile. I stay within a few paces of one of the guys that passed me and could see the other one starting to pick off runners up the road. One of x-country kids was falling off fast, and another was lingering just ahead of us.

We pass the young guy and he obviously went out too fast but still looked okay and hung on for awhile. But we didn't pick anyone else up. The guy in front of me is pulling away slightly as we pass two miles at 12:28, so another 6:26 split. I make an effort to stay within pace of the guy ahead, and we are pulling away from anyone following us. Then I see him start to lose a step, so I try to evenly pick mine up and work on catching him. At around 2.8 or so I'm within two paces of him and he turns it back on a little. I don't have a lot in the tank so I do the backwards glance to see if anyone is close and just try to hang to the finish. 3 miles at 18:58 or so, and into the finish.

Time of 19:35 (I really wanted to break 20 minutes after coming so close last week), 8th overall out of 165, and second in the 30-34 AG (yeah, another medal). No hope of catching the first place guy in my AG as he got 2nd overall and was about 2 minutes ahead I think. The Wake Forest guy ran a 16:47 ..... ugh!

Good race. Not going to run tomorrow's 5k like I was thinking of. Breaking 20 after running a 24:10 in April when I started running again after 13 years is a sweet personal victory!

Beat that guy just ahead of me. ;)

Bagel, water and conversation. Stretch.


The fact that I've only been running again since March??


Good race, would have been nice to have an indoor venue for post race activities as it was still in the 30's at the end of the race.