Good Clean Run: Great Bay 5K

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Great Bay 5K

I woke up early Saturday morning with no scheduled plan, race, or destination. Not content with a boring solo run for the day, I found the Great Bay 5K in Stratham NH that looked good for competition and age group prizes. I looked up prior year results. My chances of an age group win looked good but you never know who is going to show up. After an easy warm up on nearby trails, I ran over to the start and saw Nate Jenkins in CMS colors. I wore my tuxedo shirt to follow the Halloween theme.

Before the race with Derek Hamel and Krissy. Derek went on to race a 16:53 and get best costume.

I got on the line next to Steve Dowsett who has run low 16’s on this “known as a fast course” as it drops into Greenland, NH. The race took off and I filtered into around 15^th place on Rt. 33. Derek Hamel (short time CMS’r), dressed up as a mime, zipped past me 400m into the race. I held on through mile one which had a clock around 5:20 as the course started to drop down a bit on a curvy road. Mile 2 was reached in 10:50 or so as I was battling a few youngsters with a few Seacoast runners ahead as we climbed the only significant hill. The course dropped back down for a quick finish.

A high school runner zipped past and encouraged me to go with him just before 3 miles. I kept place, 12^th, reaching the line in 17:13 for my quickest 5K of the year. The course is certainly a fast one. I grabbed a water and handed out fist pumps to the guys around me. I was good with the effort. I headed back out onto the course to find Krissy and check out the costumed runners. I found Krissy with less than a mile to go and ran her in.

We collected our race bags for some dry clothes and filtered through a nice post-race set up where I had some pumpkin bread and clam chowder. A quick peek at the results found me placing 2^nd in the age group with a Maine runner about 20 seconds up. Full results. Next race up for me is the New England Cross Country Championships at Franklin Park.