GT350H

Exercise: Drove to Oneonta, AL (about 75 miles from my house in Harvest) for the Covered Bridge Festival 5K, BUT, there were no covered bridges on the 5K course! It was merely an out and back with a sharp turnaround in the middle of the road at the halfway point. Being so far from home, I saw no one that I recognized which relegated me to sizing up the competition by looking at their clothing/shoes/and warmup regimen. While doing my warmup I saw one guy with an "Oxford Realty" singlet on - this is a race team from Birmingham that has always had fast runners. I also saw some of Oneonta High's track team, a very fit guy wearing a new pair of racing flats, and one very tall, young guy with a college jacket on. The only one doing any sort of warmup was the older guy in the Oxford Realty shirt (David Aarons - 49 years old).

At the start, the tall guy, the guy in racing flats, and several of the track team kids took off. At the half mile mark, my Garmin had me doing a 5:28 pace and I was in about 5th place. On a short downhill stretch before we crossed hwy 75, I passed Mr. Racing Flats and all the track team kids, leaving only the very tall guy (who was wearning a "wife-beater" t-shirt and longer than normal white socks which eventually didn't bode well for his longivity at the front). At about 0.8 miles, David Aarons and I both caught the tall guy and ran side by side for the next 1/2 mile, hitting the 1 mile marker at 5:52 according to my watch (too fast). We both took turns opening up 2-3 yard leads until he pulled ahead of me just before the turnaround. Being able to see the followers on the way back, the only other near competitor was a younger guy with head phones who was some 10-15 seconds back. Trying to keep David in range proved difficult - I hit the 2nd mile in 6:12 and still had to go back up the hill we'd come down in the first mile. He pulled away a little more in the closing minutes, finishing in 18:51. I faded to 2nd overall in 19:16. The early leader, the tall guy, finished in 22+ minutes. And I'm not sure where the racing flats guy finished, but it wasn't in the top 5.

Overall estimate of finishers was about 80. David Aarons said his 18:51 was his slowest 5K in the last 10 years so I didn't feel too bad, but it wasn't a sub 19...

With a long run tomorrow, could hit my highest mileage month of the year with 5 days to spare.

Total mileage for the week: 6.12
Total mileage for the month : 125.10