Burnt Toast: Shrewsbury Special 5k Road Race

It's finally here! My post about the 5k race last Saturday has finally arrived due to a mixture of me getting around to writing it and getting the photos from it. Either way, it was a bad race. I came in with a shocking time of 33:29. I'm hoping to get under 32 on one of my next two races, the Spirit of Shrewsbury and the Northborough Apple fest: both within the span of a fortnight. I've actually been training for these ones though so I hope I'll be better.

To start the day off, we had some torrential thunder storms and lightning which delayed the races by about 45 minutes. It didn't take long to heat up while we were running though.

The race started with a torturous hill that pretty much winded me before the race had begun. Good thing there was a long downhill following that allowed me to regain my breath. After that, it wasn't bad but it seemed to be slightly uphill for the longest time and I didn't notice any down hill. After the first mile marker, I thought I was doing pretty good but the second mile marker seemed to take forever to arrive. I just assumed they didn't have one like the Hopkinton race but when I assumed I was about 2.5 miles in, I saw the two-mile marker. This depressed me. However, I wasn't doing that bad. It was only about 21 minutes in. The third mile was what killed me. By this time it was getting very hot and the sun was out making the road comparable to a sauna. After, several ups and downs, I was just looking for some flat but after I turned a corner around 2.5 miles, I was greeted with another big hill. This killed me and I had to walk for the first time in any of my 5k events. I did manage to begin running again at the end to finish the race though.