St. Patty’s Day 5k

This happened about a month ago, but better late than never… I headed up to Kirksville Friday evening, visited with some friends and spent the night and Walt’s & Dawn’s house. It was good to see some friends, though unfortunately you can’t see them all with such little time to work with… The next morning I was shocked to find 2+ inches of snow on the ground with huge snow flakes continuing to fall. Despite the snow, around 100 of us lined up for the 9 am start. The winner from the previous year wasn’t there and neither were Matt Lucas or Todd Beaverson. John Richardson who I had narrowly edged out the year before was there but nobody else that I recognized that might take the 1st overall position.

The course was slightly modified and was a little shorter this year so the times would be faster. One person who was of unknown quantity but possibly a contender was Sean Masa, I recognized the name but I wasn’t sure from what race and how fast he was.

The gun sounded and we were off. The initial pace was comfortable and I considered pushing it a little, but I also knew in about a mile the current pace wouldn’t feel so good anymore. Sean was leading and I was content to follow for the time being. After about half a mile, Sean began to pick up the pace and nobody else with us could follow. I briefly tried to match the pace and pulled into second place by myself, but I could tell I wouldn’t be able to maintain the pace so I backed off slightly.

A mile into the race, Thomas Etter pulled even with me. Thomas is a really good biker and competes in adventure races with James Kaufman. Since he had pulled me back I decided to let him take the lead so I could hopefully maintain a slight advantage on him when it came to the finish. I settled into a comfortable pace behind Thomas and would have stayed there until a half mile to go or so, but around two miles he said something about being new at 5k’s and I ought to be setting the pace, so I took over the pace setting and back into second place.

About a block later we came to a street that the race normally went right on and I started to turn right. A police officer and a volunteer were standing there and neither of them said anything initially until I had fully completed the turn at which point they hollered after me and said I was supposed to go straight! So I turned around and had to hustle to make up the five or so yards I had fallen behind Thomas. At this point we were down to about three quarters of a mile and I began to pick up the pace. Thomas stayed close until the very end when I pulled away finishing four seconds ahead of him. My final time was 17:40; however the course was short so I wasn’t as happy about my time as I would have been on a proper 5k course.

All in all another fun St. Patrick’s Day 5k. It was nice having Thomas push me and also for the company, running in second place by yourself is lonely. Though if he keeps racing 5k’s I might be finishing second to him!