B.A.A. 5K

We flew to Boston Friday afternoon in preparation for the marathon on Monday.  We signed up again this year for the 5K on Saturday morning.  The race starts and ends in Boston Common and is a short walk from our hotel.  The course takes you along the final stretch of the marathon course so you get a nice taste of what to expect on the big day.

Runners self seed for this race, meaning people can line up according to their expected pace.  We made the mistake of lining up too far back last year and had to go around a ton of people as we ran -- walkers and slow runners who clearly shouldn't have lined up where they did.  This year we moved up closer to the front, although I still think we could have gone a little farther.  The initial part of the race is a little bit of a bottleneck as you leave the park area and that did slow me down in the beginning.

The race itself was fine -- it was a typical 5K.  As I ran it I thought about how much I really don't like the distance and why I don't run more of them.  It's so short and you just push hard the entire time.  I have no problem pushing hard, but when your usual running workouts are around an hour or longer, this is over so quickly.  It's funny how much I've grown accustomed to longer endurance events.

There was some on and off rain during the race, nothing terrible but enough to make it a little wet.  I was careful about where I ran.  The roads were pretty good but the last thing I needed was to slip or twist something just before the marathon.

Overall, it ended up being my second fastest 5K.  As is typical for most races, the first mile was my slowest as I tried to maneuver around the crowds of people.  Then my pace picked up from there.

Not a bad result

We got a race shirt, a small medal with the B.A.A. unicorn on it and a nice bag of snacks after the race.  After we both finished, we made our way over to Dunkin for our morning coffee (of course!).  Having done this race the last two years, I don't feel a strong need to do it again next year if we come back to Boston.

Happy to be done!

...And so do we