Seasons 52 Park Avenue 5K

What a long name for a 5K, but this particular one was sponsored by a restaurant named... Seasons 52. How about that?!

My goal for this was to come in about 22 minutes, which is just over a 7 min/mile pace. So I took along my trusty Garmin Forerunner 201, and seeded myself half a dozen or so rows from the start. This race had a gradual hill and was mostly on cobblestone roads, which are bad for running because of the occasional odd-angled bricks.

The speedwork is paying off already, as I managed to set my new PR of 21:49 for an average pace of 7:01 min/mile. I was 168/2282 overall, 139/1035 among men, and 17/138 in my division. So I'm extremely happy with how the race went.

My division place is interesting - I was slower than #18 through #20 in the division, going by chip/net time. However, the results are sorted by official time so I did well by starting closer to the line. For me, the only number important is chip time. If I can somehow drop another 2 minutes off my 5K time I will start placing in the top ten and at that point, the difference between chip and official time will be important.

As a side note, the Forerunner measured the course at 3.2 miles instead of the 3.1 miles, for a ~3% error.