This is my second race and first at this distance. I thought my training went well before the race I was regularly running 5-6 miles on my long weekly runs and had pushed my weekly mileage up to about 20 miles per week. My 5 mile training runs were right around 55 minutes, so my goal was 53 –52 minutes and my reach goal was sub-50 minutes.

Forecast before the race calls for freezing rain and more rain, I start to get worried because I don't really have a lot of rain gear and I'm not sure how well I will handle it. Anyway, after much panic and trying to find a new rain proof shell, I just give up and set myself to use what I have. I settle on three layers up top (short sleeve tech shirt, long sleeve UA Cold Gear top and a rain proof shell that I borrowed from my wife) and two layers on the bottom (tights with windpants over them) also gloves and a sock hat, basically my usual training outfit plus the rain jacket.

Because of the rain, I tell my wife not to bother coming along with girls (my 2 year old twins). The race is scheduled to start at 8:45 (there is also a 25k set to start at 8:30), the location of the race is about 20 minutes from my house but I want to make sure I am their in plenty of time, so I leave my house at about 7:30 and arrive at the location at about 8:00. The race is at the local High School and the registration is set up in the foyer of the school. The signage wasn't the best but I just kind of watched the people around for a few minutes and it became pretty apparent where everybody was headed. I head in and get my number (4) and the race give-away was an ear band with the race name embroidered on the front (pretty cool, I thought). This isn't a chip timed race, so this is a new experience for me.

So I have my stuff and I head back out to my car, it's really raining pretty hard now and the race is scheduled to start in about 40 minutes. I check in with my wife to let her know I made it OK and start to stretch and get my stuff ready. At about 8:15 I take a slow jog around the school to get loose, the first thing I notice is that the rain is really cold on my face and I don't have any water-proof gloves, so this could be pretty uncomfortable.

After my warm-up jog, I head back to the registration area to await the start of the race. I notice that there is a course map and description posted; the map doesn't really do me much good since I don't know the area but the description was something like this "a gently rolling out and back course with one large hill". I think, OK, that doesn't sound very bad at all. The one item that I do pick up from the map is that the start for the 5 miler is at the far corner of the parking lot. Now, my watch says 8:30 but I don't see anybody really leaving the registration area, so I guess things are running behind schedule. I see I guy walk by me with a bull-horn and I am guessing I missed some kind of announcement, but I figure it's safe to assume that he is leading people to the 25K. I start to make my way to where I believe the 5 miler is starting. Once again the signage was lagging here, I didn't see anything that indicated 5 miler here, but I was confident I was in the right place. The 25K started further up the road and would lead them through the start line for the 5 miler, so I just found a nice spot off to the side and started to get ready. I struck up a nice conversation with a girl up from the Bronx, her boyfriend was running in the 25K, she asked where the 25K was starting and I basically replied "up there, I think, but I was really only paying attention to the 5 miler". Anyway, the 25K start and we cheer as the runners go by, at this point there is a pretty good crowd around me so I figure I must be in the right place.

So, Bull-horn guy makes his way up from the 25K start and we start to make out way over to our start line. Since I was one of the first ones there, I start towards the front of the start line, thankfully, my brain kicks in and reminds me that my 10 minute mile pace belongs somewhere in the middle, so I find a decent spot and let the line fill in before me. Bull-horn guy lets us know that it's tight for the first 300 or so meters until we exit the parking lot but then it widens out once we hit the road. With that we are off, bull-horn guy is right about it being tight at the start, I decide to drift over to the right of the pavement and run on the grass for the start. Once we get onto the road, thing clear up quite a bit, we start on a back road entrance to the school, this goes for about 1/3 of a mile and we cross a busy street onto a residential street and that is where most of the race is. I have my Ipod+ to help me maintain a good pace, I check it at about the ½ mile mark and it says I am running about a 10:40 pace, I am confident I can do better than that so I push it a little. At about this point we hit our first hill, I look up and it doesn't look too bad, I am pushing my legs but just trying to maintain a steady pace, the first thing I notice is that I am gaining a lot of ground on the people in front of me, I guess all the hills I ran in training are paying off J. So the hill goes up and I notice that the road bends at the top of the hill, so I can see what is on the other side (I think you know where this is going), I finally hit the top of the hill and feeling good, until I turn the bend and realize I only climbed about a 1/3rd of the total hill. I start to get worried that maybe I was over-confident and it's going to bite me in the butt, I try to stay positive and just maintain a good pace, I was definitely feeling it by the time I hit the top, but I was also relieved because, if that was the "big hill" then it was all downhill from here. Fast-Forwarding here, the rest of the out portion contained some more gentle hills, more down-hill than up. The turnaround at about the 2.5 mile mark went smoothly, the only thing of note really was that I continued to gain on most of the runners in front of me when we hit up-hill sections, so I was very happy with that, unfortunately I think I also was loosing time on the down-hill sections (I need to work on that). Oh yeah, I neglected to update you on the weather, it was pretty weird, as soon as the race started, the rain stopped. It warmed up considerably, to the point that I had to lose my hat, gloves and raincoat before the race was over.

Finishing up the race, I think I finished pretty strongly, my Nike+ data shows my speed increasing steadily for the last 2 miles, so that is positive. I didn't hear my time when I actually finished but I was pretty confident that it was sub 50 minutes so I was very happy with that. It started raining again within 15 minutes of finishing the race, I didn't stay for awards, since I assumed they would wait for the 25K and that would end for another hour at least.

All in all, a very pleasant experience, part of me wishes my girls could have been their to cheer me on but I understand it wouldn't have been smart for them to be outside in that weather.

I checked the website today for my official time and it was 49:06.43, which ranked 232 out of 282 listed runners. I'm happy with the time but I was hopping to be more in the middle of the pack.