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Sunday's crime scene was Lincoln, Rhode Island for the 10th Annual Rhody 5k (results) which serves once again as the USATF-New England 5k Road Championships. This year, it was once again a scorcher, as the temps hovered around 80 degrees, but the field was a little deeper up front so it made for an interesting day. The heat got the best of quite a few people and some of the big guns dropped out in the first couple miles... I even took water at the first water stop, just to splash over my head to keep my temp down a bit.

I won't go too deep into a race write up here, as for some reason I'm not really in the mood...but overall I am very pleased with my time and effort today. I sat out in the sun all day yesterday, ran a bit too hard in my run (mid day) and then got no more than 2 hours of sleep last night. So I was pretty sure I'd tank today, but just the opposite happened (to my surprise). I went out relatively conservative (for grand prix 5k standards) at 4:57 and was no where near the top 20. I passed a few usual suspects during the first mile, was repassed during the second mile, and made up some ground and did some re-repassing during mile 3. I went through 2 miles in 10:05 (I was shooting for sub 10), but started to increase the pace slightly over the last mile as I started to pick off some guys that usually beat me pretty handily in the grand prix races. Just after 2 miles I was right behind Justin Fyffe who was no doubt feeling his Vermont City and Pack Monadnock races the past 2 weeks (that boy better rest up for Washington!) and not too far back of our top guy today, Andy McCarron. As we approached the entrance to the track, I was right on Sean Livingston and had just passed Justin, Ben Ndaya and Nick Wheeler. As we hit the last section, on the dog track, Sean took off on me, Andy dropped into another gear, and I was shooting to pass one last guy from Adidas New England right at the line (although they have him in front of me in the results...doesn't make a bit of difference in the final scoring though). In the end I finished 2 ticks faster than last year at 15:42 and 18th overall out of 440. My best Grand Prix finish so far (previous being 19th place at the 6k last year). I will gladly take it.



Splits: 5k - 15:42 (5:03 pace) - 18th out of 440

Mile 1) 4:57
Mile 2) 5:08 (10:06)
Mile 3) 5:02 (15:08)
last 3.1) :32 (15:41)


CMS group photo (less a few of the anti-socials that were MIA during the shoot) L-R back row: Greg Putnam, Jim Pawlicki, Ben Strain. L-R front row: Tim VanOrden, Jim Johnson, Joe Shairs, Dave Dunham, Dan Verrington, Tim Mahoney.

The CMS Men's Open team placed 5th overall (of 19 teams), The Men's Masters placed 2nd of 11 teams.



Top 20 Overall plus CMS in blue: