Great Bay 5k

Having taken a week off for vacation, I was not expecting too much when I got back.  The Great Bay 5k is a nice course, though, and I achieved my Master's PR on that course two years ago.

When I got there, I found they had moved the parking and changed the starting line; it was a bit confusing.  I ended up late to the line and didn't get enough stretching.   Once I got going, though, I was fine, and I ran well: 5:35, 5:45, 5:47 for 17:41.  My best is 17:26.  Congrats to Chris Ritchie, who blew away his PR by over 30 seconds for 16:30!   I ran the entire race with Heather Searles, the women's winner, who also had a great race.  Her boyfriend (or is it roommate?) Chris Mahoney, and Teammate Jim Johnson took 2-3 overall, running right at 5:00 pace.  Jasmin Lapir came back from injury and claimed his age division award with 17:34.

After the race, I rushed over to Londonderry for Nick's NH State XC meet.  Like the athletes, I waited around for 4 hours for his race, and like the athletes, I was exhausted before the race even started.  Nick did not run well, but ended up 17th overall, and his team, which had been undefeated, took 4th.  It was quite the experience, in that he had never had to wait so long to compete before.  He didn't bring lunch and was forced to eat "what they had" which was pizza.  Of course he cramped up during the race after eating that.  Still, he gets to run the race next year and will hopefully do much better; there were two others ahead of him that were not in 8th grade, so he definitely has his work cut out for next year.

We are racing the half marathon on Sunday, and then Nick moves on to Junior Olympics, and I start training for Indoor Track (with Alex, who will be running for the HS team).

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Darin