A Wicked Frosty New Year

A quiet weather day between storms gave me a great opportunity to try a road race for the first time since the Baystate Marathon in October (although I did run the Larry Robinson 5K with my daughter just for fun). Can you believe that about 450 runners turned out on New Year's Morning to hoof it through the streets of Salem for the well-run Wicked Frosty Four-miler? A good-looking bunch, as you can see here, trying to stay warmed up before the start at the Old Town Hall:

I have to be pretty happy with my watch time of 35:06. This pace(8:43) is 10 seconds better than my previous best 5K pace back in late June at Appleton Farms and I just felt SOLID all the way through. My idea was to start out with a 9 min mile and see what happened and, indeed, I ran slightly faster than that through 3 miles and then was able to crank it up in to the finish. According to my new friend, Mr. Garmin, I was running 6:30 pace at the end. :)

Full race results here.

10 miles tomorrow!