This morning I took part in the inaugural Sacramento Giant Race Riverfront 5K at Raley Field in West Sacramento. It was a beautiful morning, and the weather was perfect for a race. This was the same locale as that of the Shamrock'n Half Marathon that I ran a couple weeks ago where the weather didn't cooperate (this race, of course, was quite a bit shorter).
The starting coral for the race was not very wide and they chose to go by the honor system for lining up rather than having markers showing the expected paces where runners should line up. The lack of the help in lining up always gets me. Is it really that much effort to have a few markers? It seems like every time there are not markers, I always have to spend the first quarter to half mile weaving in and out of walkers and slow runners. Today's race was no different.
I spent a bit of effort getting myself clear of the massive blockage at the start. Once I got going, it was pretty smooth sailing. One nice thing about starting "randomly" is that you continue to pass runners throughout most of the race. My GPS watch had the race being a little short, but in the end, I came very close to setting a new 5K PR for myself (my 5K PR is 23:53.6):
Along with performing quite well, my results compared to the rest of the field were also quite impressive. I finished 10th in my age group (30-39) which was in the top 10%. I was 29th of the males (top 7%) and 38th overall (top 3%). Not bad for a field of 1400. I know there were a lot of walkers, but I'm not sure when I'll ever do so well again.
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