Super Bowl Sunday is also the day of a 5-K race from the Race Cancer Foundation. This is my second year of doing this race, and compared with last year, the roads were definitely better. The same cannot be said for my time, however. Last year my gun time and chip time were 27:20 and 26:38.  This year, my gun and chip time were 28:36 and 27:48, respectively.

Now, if I had been at my fastest pace from last year, I would have been near the top three for my age group in this race. The races are always a crap shoot, but it would be nice to win my age category at least once. Although that can be tough to do in a running town like Boston. All the same, it is an incentive for maintaining one’s conditioning.

I will say that one of the lessons I have learned from this race is that I think it would be a good idea to have a warm up routine. I have seen people who have elaborate ones and some who just kind of jog around. I think something in between might improve my personal performance.

Beyond that there were a couple of other interesting things about this race. One thing was about the organization. While the race was well organized for the most part, they did not have the road where the start line was completely closed. People were trying to turn cars down the road and would have come up behind the runners waiting at the start line. I was down at the end of the block, waiting in the sun to keep warm with some other runners. We would wave people off, but there really should have been a volunteer or cop there. I finally moved some traffic cones, one that had been smashed into a snow bank by a plow and one that was there as part of the course, to block the road.

That was really my only gripe about the race. There were some other things at the race I liked. The 5-K was only one race, there was a 5-miler at the same time. The bibs were color coded for each race and they also had people’s first names on them.  Kind of nice, I thought, especially if you were on a team where you didn’t know everyone. As I was walking back to my car, one of the other runners looked at me and said “Hi, Ben!” I said hello. It was just a goofy, friendly greeting, but nice all the same.

The other innovation, if you will is visible in this picture, which is a small, plastic mug for the recovery beers. A number of breweries were at the after party  offering pours to the runners. I thought this beat the huge number of plastic cups that get handed out and dumped at each race. It was a good appropriation of an idea I have seen at brew fests.

So, once again, time to get back to proper training, develop a warm up routine, and think about a blog post on the concept of recovery beers. If you have any thoughts on these topics, let me know.