Notes
Second time running the jingle bell run in Somerville. Race started a few minutes late. Not too many regular faces at the start other than John Longo (bandit), EJ, and Lindsay. Saw two other faster looking guys that appeared to be the biggest competition.
Race started and immediately two santas jumped to the front. Figured they were just doing it for the cameras (one of them went out of his way to keep boxing me out for no apparent reason). Sure enough, one of them hung around to the halfway point before falling back and the other I never caught). In the first 1/2 mile, a random guy in a long sleeve white shirt jumped to the lead, followed by Santa, and then a random BAA guy. The other Santa hung around as noted above for a bit.
First mile was pretty slow for me and created a pretty big gap from the lead runners who just kept moving away. Just didn't feel like I had any speed today. Pace was pretty much the same as Mill Cities. I was happy enough with it that day, but for a 5K should have been a bit quicker.
From the halfway point on, the finishing order pretty much remained flat with white shirt, BAA, Santa, then me. I never had a chance to close the gap. While my pace did pick up slightly (also benefiting from the hill structure), just never really got into my usual 5K pace. Pretty much ran the entire thing alone.
Finished with a dismal 16:53. As with last year, I still think this race is 0.03 long. Garmin had it marked at 3.17 (usually my garmin comes in 0.01 long for each mile, so a 5K is typically 3.14 on my watch). I would have been happy with a 16:30-16:35, little disappointed if the 16:53 is accurate.
1 1/1 MOPEN 15:58 15:57 5:08 David Swanson 27 M 6479 Cambridge MA
2 1/526 M3039 16:11 16:11 5:13 Brendan Prindiville 36 M 5387 Boston MA
3 1/358 M1829 16:14 16:13 5:14 Dan Vassallo 28 M 6806 Peabody MA
4 2/526 M3039 16:53 16:53 5:26 Christopher Klucznik 31 M 3458 Somerville MA
5 2/358 M1829 17:11 17:10 5:32 Stephen Masterson 28 M 4169 Brookline MA
6 3/526 M3039 17:16 17:16 5:34 Frank Doyle 37 M 1831 Lexington MA
7 3/358 M1829 17:21 17:18 5:34 Breno Melo 28 M 4461 Brighton MA
8 1/10 M1517 17:25 17:23 5:36 Marcelo Brociner 17 M 7333 Somerville MA
9 4/358 M1829 17:25 17:23 5:36 Andre Rolim 20 M 7334 Somerville MA
10 5/358 M1829 17:47 17:46 5:43 Paulo Gwedes 18 M 7327 Somerville MA