2010 Bowman Cup

I met up with a friend from college to do the Kent State Homecoming 5K this morning. It was a fantastic day to be out and about, in the 70s, sunny. Finished in 26:17 by my watch, 26:30 by the official race time (I like my time better since it took a few seconds to get to the start because there were so many people -- there was no chip timing!)

Except that it was a day of near misses! Only the first 400 people got the really cool tshirts, I was #408. My 5k PR is 26:06, so I was 12 seconds off. And when I went to Ray's Place afterward to dutifully replace carbohydrates lost, like every good little runner should, they had just run out of the Centennial Alumni glasses. *Pouts.*

Seriously, though, it was a really good day. It was by far the most crowded race I've done... almost 1000 people. The first mile was pretty slow, around 9:30, just because there were so many runners. I started out in the middle of the pack. I picked it up the second mile, but there was a bottleneck when the race turned onto a narrower trail, so I was just under 18 minutes at the marker. Kicked it up toward the end even more but the finish was all uphill.