This has been my year of 5Ks to the point where I'm wondering if I'll do anything of distance again, but since I'm temporarily at the low end of my AG I might as well go with it!

This weekend was an inaugural event for the area: a 5K at the Selfridge Air National Guard Base in celebration of their 100th continual year of operation. That's right -- they started as an early Army Air Corps base in WWI and have been active ever since, most recently sending squadrons to Iran and Afghanistan at times. The base is named after Thomas Selfridge, who was the first person to die in a plane crash in 1908. He was an army lieutenant who was flying with Orville Wright to evaluate a new plane for military use. Orville was seriously hurt but survived.

The event organization was a bit lower key than I expected, although next week there's a major air show out there with an appearance by the Thunderbirds, etc. They had limited the "civilian entries" to 300 and it took a while to be admitted to the base since they had to check ID and look for your name on a list. Unfortunately for my chances, my friend/nemesis "Dr.Mike" was also on the list, so an AG win became less likely.

The course had the form of a big rectangle and couldn't have been any flatter (it's an airfield!). We ran north on the man base road, then turned east out to the lake. The next leg was on a really nice paved path right along the shoreline of Lake St Clair (a small lake in between Huron and Erie). The weather was clear and cool and the views across the lake all the way to Canada were very nice! I was maintaining what felt like a fast pace, although I could see that Dr. Mike was increasing his lead as we proceeded.

A couple of final turns and across the finish line, and I finished in 27:25, but Dr. Mike had me beaten by about 30 seconds (he's 2 out of 3 for finishing in front this year). So I took 2nd of 4 in the AG with 3rd place almost 3 minutes behind. I was also 60 of about 250 in the event, so again ahead of a lot of younger folks. Checking later, I found that this was actually only my 3rd-fastest 5K of the year, but in reality I haven't been doing much running lately and was not really trained up for this one like I could have been.

Overall it was a good day for racing, but I doubt I'd drive all the way out there again for a small race with not much support.

Sounds like a fun run.  Nice finish, too.  I'd be very happy with 27:25