After my revelation run on March 28th, I headed to Cambridge on Sunday March 29th for the

Cambridge CityRun 5 Miler

The race is based out of the Russell Youth Center on Huron Ave in Cambridge. The building looks brand new with a beautiful gym and nice bathrooms. We don’t often see that at a race.

The race was sponsored by Marathon Sports and Saucony. So I had to wear my Saucony Omni 12 running shoes for the race. Proceeds benefited the Friends of Cambridge Athletics and the Andrea Harvey Memorial Fund.

Looking around at the runners before the race, the crowd looked very young. A lot of high school and college students. Harvard and MIT were there with their fitness programs. It looked like some Cambridge High School sports teams were there, but they didn’t look like the cross country team!

My Race Plan

I ran pretty hard on Saturday at the April Fool’s 4 Miler and my training has not been particularly strenuous since last Fall. I wasn’t sure how my legs would feel or if perhaps I’d discover a niggle somewhere after I started the race.

I took advantage of the nice warm gym and did a pretty thorough stretching routine. Everything felt okay and not particularly tired. I had half a bag of PowerBar gummies and a bottle of water before the race. There were plenty of clean porta-potties in addition to the warm bathrooms in the youth center. My pre-race routine was executed flawlessly.

We lined up in front of the youth center on Huron Ave. It looked like close to 1,000 runners in the crowd, but RaceWire only shows 605 finishers. I did my usual chatting with other runners, started my watch and waited for the start.

Starting downhill was nice, but I knew it would not be much of an indicator of how I would feel after a mile.

At about 1.5 miles we hit the “Cambridge Highlands” on Concord Ave. It was really just a rise in the road. It didn’t slow most people down, but I began to feel my groove. My first mile was 7:11, mile 2 was 7:24 and the next three miles averaged 7:45.

I was surprised that I was able to pass people and that most of them never passed me back. I passed a group of high school boys and figured they’d get me back later in the race. While they may have faded in the last few miles my pace stayed consistent at 7:45.

Running around Fresh Pond was nice. The path was a little narrow in places for a race and there were people walking their dogs and such. But we were away from traffic and it was somewhat peaceful.

As we turned onto the path around the pond there was a water stop, and I grabbed a cup.

I knew a gulp of water would really make a difference when I was going around the pond and pushing as hard as I could. On the way out I hit the water stop again. I knew that gulp would let me push through to the finish.

My official time was 37:34 for a 7:30 pace. Out of 34 men in my bracket I finished 8th, 82nd out of 303 men and 100th overall.

Not bad for running really hard the day before and not having a rigorous training program. 7:30 isn’t going to get me any medals, but for a 50-year old dude, I’ll take it.

The oldest man to finish was 74-year old Jim Brescia of Reading, MA. Jim finished last at 1:19:22. You have to respect a run like that.

The oldest woman to finish was Susan Wheelock of Arlington, MA at 59:21. Susan smoked a lot of kids and managed to come in 557th out of 605 runners.

There was a great under 18 turn out of over 100 runners. Many ran very well.

Full results at RaceWire.

Run well my friends,

Andy