I’m not entirely sure how this race got in my calendar, but it was there so at 11:15am I left work in my running outfit enroute to DC. I drove around a bit, couldn’t find any runners, eventually parked, jogged around a mile before finding a guy (Mark O’hara?) who knew where the start was. We ran together the half mile there… 1.5 miles is a bit more than I like to warm up, but oh well.

Upon arriving at the start, I see many, many runners, but only one I recognize, Ted Poulous. I casually eye up the competition, and before we know it, we’re off.

The race starts right around FDR Memorial Park, we swing over to Independence Avenue, make a right on Maine Street, cross over the Washington Channel bridge, which marks just about the one mile mark (was at 5:50 through there), continue past the Jefferson Memorial, and back on to Ohio Drive paralleling the Potomac. View the map for a better view.

I ran a pretty steady pace the entire way, ending me in 9th place overall. I was shooting for 11:30, so 11:02 (5:55/mi pace, which is fast considering my adult PR for a single mile on the track is 5:57 ) was very much welcomed. From the start, nothing really changed. I had a few pass me off the line, I passed two of them back over the course of the whole race, and was passed by two somewhere around the 1.25 mark. I had never run a 3k before so it was enjoyable to be done so quickly… It was a bit disheartening to end on such a long straight, though. After passing my the Jefferson you can pretty much see the finish line, but you’ve still got like 40% of the race still to run.

Anyway, a nice mid-week speed workout if nothing else. I also managed to jump in to sort finisher cards at the end… The whole race was actually run by folks who showed up having no idea they were going to administer a race. The starter actually counted to 5 to start us… As you can imagine, every false started

In other news, results of the Arlington Science Focus School 5k are up.