Yesterday, I ran the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K. I finished in 25:34 (8:15 pace). I placed 531/2236 overall and 61/134 in my class. That’s not my best 5K time to date, but it’s a lot better than my time at last year’s Race for the Cure. I finished that in 27:30 and by the end of the season I was about 2:15 faster, so I’m hoping I can shave another 2+ minutes off at this year’s Run Shadyside.

BTW, this was my last race in the 20-29 and 25-29 brackets. After May 29, I’ll be in the 30-39 and 30-34 classes. 🙂

On April 21, I ran the Run With Haart 5K in Schenley Park. I’d have posted an entry about it sooner, but the results only recently appeared on the web. Anyhow, I finished in 26:18 (8:29 pace); I placed 69/155 overall and 28/42 in my age/sex class. It certainly wasn’t my best 5K performance to date, but considering I didn’t train for it and drank 4 beers and a glass of wine the night before, I can’t complain. 😉

On March 24, I ran my first race of 2007, the University of Pittsburgh Campus Classic 5K (the proceeds of which will benefit research at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute). My time of 26:10 (8:25 pace) was about as good as I could expect for my first race in four months. I placed 80/185 and 2/8 among 25-29 males.

The race was supposed to take place on the streets of Oakland, but protesters beat us to the permit. Consequently, the race was moved to Schenley Park. I suspect the race organizers were unfamiliar with the course they set up (based on previous races in the park). My suspicions were first raised when I didn’t see a marker for mile 1 until I’d been running more than 10 minutes. Afterwards, a friend of mine said that the course felt long to her. These observations were enough to prod me unto plotting the course on Gmaps Pedometer. GP usually underestimates distances because it does not account for changes in altitude, so I was rather surprised to see that my trace of the course was 3.25 miles long (instead of the proper 3.1 miles). If I’m right about the course being long, my actual 5K time would be just under 25 minutes, a personal best. 🙂

P.S. I used my iPod. What are you going to do about it? 😛