Notes
This was a well-operated race to support Best Buddies and they had some good speaches at the beginning and anthem. Overall $40,000 was raised for charity, quite a fundraising effort for a 5K!
Knee felt fine during the race, warmup, and cooldown so that is a good sign. Race went well, not a deep field though. Gun went off and three of us moved into a brief lead pack on a slight uphill first half mile. By the first turn just after the half mile mark, the other two were breathing pretty heavy and dropped them pretty quickly. Rest of the race was solo other than the bike cop in the distance ahead clearing traffic. Put in a pretty even split effort but just couldnt quite dig down for the extra speed. Would have loved to make a push towards the 16:00 barrier but still have a long way to go. One takeaway is that my speed is returning after my marathon recovery so still plenty of time over the next two months to have some fun with some shorter races and see what happens.
Ran warmup/cooldown with Joe from work. He was a 32 minute 10K runner back at Northeastern but work and life obviously makes it difficult to train at that level these days. Invited him to run with SRR on the marathon long runs this winter, always good to have some more fast people in the group to help push us. Also saw Meghan at the race with her boyfriend. Good D&T turnout, around 29 of us, with the team raising around $1,000. Not a bad showing, but not well organized from the D&T organizer who never coordinated to have us meet at all on raceday. Would have been a good opportunity for a team picture and to get the D&T name out there like the other groups.