Last year I ran in two of these 1.875 mile races at noon on a workday. I planned on doing more, but it just didn’t fit the schedule. Fast forward to this training season and I have track workouts scheduled for Wednesdays! Why not run a race instead? So the day after the inauguration, I made my way in to DC (in my illegal/unregistered car because I accidentally left the lights on the Civic when I did vehicle shuffling this AM), and I ran.<br/><br/>I glanced around at the competition, didn’t recognize anyone, and we were off! 25 degrees, strong gusty winds… Joy! I led for a good bit of the first half of the race; my watch told me I was on 5:30 pace. As we got to the Jefferson Memorial, two guys passed me; one looking stronger than the other. I kept on pushing, but the pace was not one I could keep up. I went through the mile in 5:37 with the two of them just a few meters ahead of me. In to the final .875, they opened up an even larger gap, but I could tell the one in 2nd was not doing so well… I caught and passed him in pretty quick fashion. Unfortunately, the guy in 1st was a level of runner above me; I’d have to settle for 2nd on this day. I came through the finish in 10:56 (5:48 pace), which is a 6 second personal record. Considering the conditions, I’d say I’ve made some good progress (the previous best was set in really nice weather).<br/><br/>Burnt lungs, a slight cough due to the damage I surely did to my throat, I’ll be happily cracking a beer tonight in celebration.<br/><br/><a href=”http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=7492983″ target=”_self”>My GPS</a><br/><a href=”http://dcroadrunners.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=416:dcrrc-tidal-basin-3k&amp;catid=11:race-results&amp;Itemid=34″ target=”_self”>Results</a> (handily posted by me <img src=”http://www.iammike.org/cutenews/data/emoticons/smiley.gif”/>)<br/>