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Ok I got talked into racing in this little 5K in Kirkland just a little over an hour before the start of the race by my friend Kristen.  I was going to go do one of my favorite trail runs on Tiger Mountain but this was shorter and would be over quicker than the drive to the Tiger Mountain trailhead.

It was cool, wet and windy which of course made it feel pretty cold.  It's a small race and I though well maybe I could take a shot at the win. 

The gun went off and I was chasing a couple of 14 year olds....hhhmmm....well maybe I'm not going to win this thing.

I eased into the race and was sitting about 20th through the first mile then started picking off the overly zealous speedsters.  I was however about 45 seconds behind the leaders already.  I continued to cruise at a solid pace and worked to catch a group in the final mile but couldn't quite catch them (or I really wasn't that motivated).

What I've really come to realize is that when you train for the ironman and in particular the marathon in the ironman you don't get a lot of "fast" speedwork.  What this means is that ant pretty much at any distance shorter than a half marathon I've pretty got much one speed which is right around 6:10 mile pace. 

I finished up the race in 19:05 in 7th place and in 2nd place in my age group.  It's always nice to see us older guys holding our own.  5 of the top 7 where 39 or older.  It was also cool to see that the guy who finished second and won my age group is an old rival Stormy Shouman (now goes by Storm). 

Storm was a phenomenal miler and 2 miler in high school, I never did manage to beat him then and some things never change.  However I bet if I wanted to I could find that speed again.  We'll see. 

Now it's time to debate if I'm going to race the Seattle Half and if you didn't see it you can checkout my Kona race report here.

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