Love 5k

I was looking through one of my Start 2 Finish emails, and I saw this Love 5k race in Cornelius. I have been wanting to do some more road racing. I decided to sign up, but as I was signing up, I clicked on standard buttons, and it came to say "registration complete". It was at this moment that I realized, it didn't prompt me for my credit card. I thought that there must be some error that I just missed. I have done this something like thousands of times. Then, I saw notification flash up from me email. It was the registration complete email from S2F. Okay, things must have worked. I went back to read the race info more closely, and it was then that I realized that this was a "free" race. They just asked for donations. This is a little different from most races but hey, I can roll with the flow. 

Race morning when I picked up my bib, I dropped off my donation. I can only hope that it made it in to the hands of the right party. 

Moving on to the race, overcast skies were nice but the humidity was awful. As is usual, my pre-course run left me soaked with sweat. 

We all gathered just before the 8 AM start. I feel like I have been away from road racing for so long that I hardly know anyone these days. 

All the young bodies rolled out hard from the starting line. I settled in to enjoy the slightly downhill start to the greenway. The course ran through local neighborhood streets and part of the local greenway. Everyone stretched out pretty quick. I pickup and putting down my feet but no where near as fast as those in front of me. The S2F guys did a great job. They had plenty of directional signage and plenty of workers along the course. In my opinion, getting lost would have been pretty hard. 

The greenway was fairly flat. I really didn't notice any challenging hills. I got to see everyone at the turn around and got a rough gauge of how far that they were ahead of me. 

Turning off the greenway, we were back in the neighborhoods, and here, there were plenty of rolling hills. I was gaining on the guys ahead of me, but I wasn't doing it fast enough. Climbing the last hill, I made a push to try and cover the gap but it wasn't enough. I ended up finishing about 4 seconds behind them. 

Still, I had good time. I ran 19:23 placing me 8th overall and 2nd in my age group. I still think that I do a sub 19. I just have to find some speed somewhere. 

The Cool Down Runner