A Wet, Crowded 5 Miles in Spring Lake

This past weekend was the Spring Lake 5 Mile run, near the beach in Spring Lake, NJ. I had run last year with some friends and looked to improve on my time. I woke up to some heavy rain in New Brunswick and kept crossing my fingers that it would clear up or be better down at the race. A persistent rain followed all the way to Spring Lake and then it cleared a little - enough that the rain did not bother me much. The crowd, on the other hand, did.

I remember it being crowded last year, but not like in was on Saturday. The rain clearly did not keep many people from running....although it seemed more people were walking or run/walking and generally getting in my way. I am not the fastest runner out there and I pay attention to my starting position so I don't get in the way of people faster than me. Clearly many of the people in front of me had little or no regard for starting positions. It took at least 2.5 miles - half the race! - before things opened up enough for me to run, with space, at a pace I wanted. Maybe I should have moved up further at the start. Either way it made for a long, annoying run at times.

I averaged around 10:30 minutes per mile for those first 2.5 miles - well off my goal of 9:40 per mile. To make matters worse it stopped raining for a bit early in the race. Yes, yes, I complained about the rain just a second ago but something far worse lurked after the rain....serious humidity! It felt like I was running in a sauna when the rain stopped. I kid you not. When the rain started back up again I was honestly relieved. At that point being wet trumped being so uncomfortably hot.

When the race thinned out at that halfway mark I was able to really stretch out and start moving....I had some ground to cover if I was going to beat my 2009 time and get anywhere close to the 9:40 per mile goal. My Garmin read 48:44 at the finish - good for a 9:47 per mile pace and one-minute or so better than 2009. My official/chip time for the race was 49:01 - also a minute better than my official/chip time from 2009.