07/22/2012 - Canaan Road Race

Race Date: Sunday July 22nd, 2012
Race Name: Canaan 5 Mile Road Race / Railroad Days Run
Race Price: $25
Race Description: Relatively flat road race with one fairly challenging hill
Race Location: Lawrence Pavilion, Rt. 44, North Canaan, CT

  

Race Distance: 5 Miles
Distance Traveled: 54.5 miles

Race Time: 9:00am
Weather: Sunny, dry, calm, temperatures in the upper 60's

Swag: Shirt
Food & Drink: Water | Juice | Oranges | Bananas | Chips | Cookies
Number of Participants: 129
Results: http://www.greystoneracing.net/pages/Race%20Results%202012/Canaan%205%20Mile%207.22.12.txt

My Results

Time: 35:43
Pace: 7:11
Place: 13 of 129
Men: 12 of 61
Men (Age 30-39): 2 of 16
Prize: Prizes only for 1st





Personal Race Info
Pre-Run: 2 Generic Tums
                Salt Stick Pill
                Gu Mandarin Orange Gel
                Water (@20oz)

During-Run: N/A

What a beautiful morning for a race. This was a pretty far drive for me so had to leave the house around 7 to get to the race with time to warm up. The drive took me through some beautiful areas of New York and Connecticut. I didn't have the exact location of the race so got a tad lost right near the end but had plenty of time to spare.

Picked up my race packet which, sadly, didn't include a race shirt. I asked and they said you had to sign up ahead of time and I guess I wasn't early enough. I went back and asked if I could at least take a picture at which point someone else came up and offered me a shirt! I was super excited. :) The organizers / volunteers were all super nice, friendly and helpful. I did a bit of a warm up and had no idea where the race started. Luckily right when it was time to start the race director from greystoneracing pointed out where it was. You can spot me in the picture all the way to the right at the front of the pack.

The race started out pretty fast and looking at my pacing I was under a 6 minute mile and knew I couldn't sustain that so I started to hold myself back a bit. I wanted to try to maintain about a 7 minute mile. A little over a mile in there was a pretty steep uphill that caused me to drop my pace a bit. Then towards the end of the race was a somewhat long slow incline. Overall though I'd say I did well with pacing coming in at 7:11 average for the race. It was a nice race on nice roads filled with nice people. I think there may have been 4 or 5 water stops along the way but I didn't feel the need for any.

They had the regular types of recovery food / drinks at the pavilion afterwards. I walked across the street to McDonalds and got 2 Egg & Cheese Biscuits and a Mango Pineapple Smoothie...so good! They gave out a few raffles which were gift certificates to local places. The top 3 male and female finishers got whistles, bags and gift certificates. I believe the top male/female in each age group also got a whistle, bag and gift certificate. They say 2nd is the first loser right? :P I definitely enjoyed the atmosphere at this race and could tell my training has been paying off.