This was my fourth participation in the race and we had the best weather ever I can remember. Other years, it was either drizzling, or freezing, or both. Everybody was commenting on how the weather was great. The size of the field also reflected that fact.

The starting line for both, the 5K run and the half, was the same. The 5K runners pulled ahead of the pack, followed by the half marathoners. They had to watch their pace at the beginning so they wouldn’t expend all their fuel.  Although, the leaders of the half marathon who achieved pace around 5:30 min./mile were, most probably, leading the entire pack. Though, I can’t confirm, as they ran out of my sight.

I ran the first 3 miles in a group of 4 runners. This group got later reshuffled by 3 different runners. We caught up with some runners and some caught up with us. We continued running in that group to mile 8, when it got reshuffled again and I ended up running with just one another runner. We ran together for another mile when I needed to take a breath and slow down. I ran mile 10 by myself, but I observed the distance from the runner ahead was not increasing. So when I caught the second breath, I decided to close the gap of about 50 m instead of running the remaining 3 miles alone. It took me a mile to close those 50 m. I reached the runner at the last u-turn and we ran together to the finish line.