Kelly's Pace Hare Hop 5K - March 2, 2008

The race itself was great and as always, Johnny J. Kelly was there to start the race. If you don’t know who Johnny J. Kelly is, he was the 1957 Boston Marathon winner. The reason why I went home for this race was because not only was this the weekend that we were celebrating my mom’s birthday, but also my wonderful girlfriend Jess’s birthday as well. They were actually born on the same day, March 4th! I also scheduled this race in because the last time I competed in this race was back in High School with my fellow track and cross country runners Mike Weckworth and Dave Tetlow. When I was speaking with Dave a few weeks prior, back in Feb he was talking about doing this race and I said lets do it together since we hadn’t raced together since high school as teammates.

(Below - Dave and I warming up prior to the race.)

The weather for the race wasn’t too bad and was about 40 degrees, but the wind was cold, blowing at about 14 mph making it feel like it was in the 30's! Once I was warmed up and ready for the race it wasn't too bad.
My plan for the race was to run it as hard as I could for as long as I could but I was thinking that would be at about a 5:45 per mile pace. Well sure enough, my first mile was a 5:15 split! I was shocked and yes I was very much sucking wind, trying to stay with the lead pack of runners. The lead pack was one 37 year old, me and 2 other 20 something’s. Things quickly thinned out after the 1st mile with the first 3 runners taking off after that. I stayed back in 4th place and let them go since they were running a whole lot faster than me. Also, how could I forget to mention at just over a mile in my left shoe came untied and the thought came to me of how many times does a coach tell you always to check your shoes before a race. I was like, you have to be kidding me, this isn’t happening to me. Well I continued running and didn’t stop to tie my shoe. The good thing was I never lost my shoe and was able to finish with it still on, but barely!

I ended up finishing 4th overall with a very comfortable lead and 3rd in my age group with a total time of 17:19, which was a 5:35 per mile pace! It was exactly how I wanted to run the race! Dave ended up running it very well as well and finished 7th overall in a time of 18:41 which was a 6:02 per mile pace. I’d have to say that he hadn’t been running much at all so he was happy with how he ran.

(Above - Finish Line - 4th overall)

My dad also is trying to make a come back to the running scene since he is still dealing with his Achilles Tendonitis, which I would have to say has been a struggle for him and very frustrating. In the mean time he has taken up biking and swimming to keep in shape with the possibility of maybe, just maybe, making his début in the Triathlon World this year. He was able to run the race as well but as more of a training run than a race since this was his first week back from being on the DL. He ran a little faster than he wanted but still managed a great finish with a time of 24:37, 51st overall and 8th in his age group of 40-49 which was a 7:56 per mile pace.

If you have been following my blog, I had mentioned that Jess was going to run this race as well, but after a tough week of being sick and recovering she was unable to run it.