Notes
At the start, Dan Vassallo said he wasn't feeling the greatest and had shown up with an oversized red sox t-shirt, so I decided to try sticking with him for a little bit to see if he was actually feeling human today. After the first turn I realized he was still fine, so I let him go, with Deluca and Sully right there. Sully asked what I wanted to run, I had said 17:20, but told him 17ish, and he said lets get under, and took off. (This was while we were running 16:20 pace or so). So it was me leading Deluca by a couple steps most of the race. After about 1.25 miles, I was getting a little scared that he was going to come up late in the race and nab third, so I was trying really hard to keep the gap, while he was trying really hard to shrink it, so we were both running really well. The first half of the 3rd mile was slow, but I had run it by myself during the warmup to internalize it, so I knew where all the turns etc were. When I got to the field, I saw ~15:10 on my watch, and knew it was about 600m for the field loop, so I started digging hard for the finish, I wasn't sure I'd have it passing the playground, but when I got to the final turn I peaked at my watch, saw ~16:40 and unleashed a track speed kick, and when I got to the cones marking the chute, I saw the clock ticking 16:55,56,57,58 and was pretty sure I got under, when the results came I had 3s to spare (I stopped my watch late and it still said sub 17).
Yeah sub 17 isn't a big deal for me, but I've run a lot of 16:40 5ks in mid season, with more training under me. I think I'm definitely more of a road racer, they're just easier for me mentally to tackle, and hold on during the late stages of a race.