Notes
Upper Saddle River 5k 2016
My goal was to go sub-18:00. Yep. Slammed on the gas hard when I saw ~17:50+ when I made the final turn, but it wasn't quite enough. But on the plus side, I out-kicked a 15-year-old boy.
Stomach had kind of been bothering me this whole week, which caused me a little trouble in the morning, but wasn't an issue during the race. In general though, not a particularly eventful race. Went through the mile in ~5:45, and the 2-mile in 11:45, which seems like fairly typical splits for this course. Didn't feel particularly good or bad at any point.
Was sort of in no man's land for the second half, but felt like I was keeping a pretty consistent pace based on the gap in front of me. Started to gain on the group in front of me in the last ~half mile (including the kid I passed at the end). Ended up taking 15th overall, which I was pretty surprised by, since 18:00+ is kind of slow for that sort of pace. Last year I think I was 19th while being almost a minute faster. But hey, I'm happy with 15th, since I was hoping for top 30. After factoring out the overall winners, I was 4th in my age group, so I just missed out on a trophy. Would have had to be about 10 seconds faster for that. Oh well!