Today was the 1st Annual Zachary Clouser & Jeremy Wildasin Memorial 5k Race in Dover. It was run by the Dover Cross Country team in honor of two local students. It started at 2 PM under blue skies and cool fall weather with a nice breeze, right around 57 degrees at race time. Perfect race weather.
Originally it was supposed to be a road course through town, but a notice posted on the race website said otherwise:
Due to a last minute snafu with the Dover borough we had to change the course of the 5k race. The new course is the Dover Cross Country course. The link to the course map is below. This will provide a unique opportunity to experience one of the many cross country courses that the kids are running every week throughout the fall.
That’s the best snafu ever, because the race course absolutely rocked.
It was a classic cross country course including jumping on rocks to cross a stream, rickety wooden bridges, looping around trees, and avoiding roots and groundhog holes. Certainly made for a scenic and yet difficult course, especially considering I’ve never so much as run a dirt trail let alone one with hazards.
With my Pumpkin Chase 5K results clearly in mind, I made a concerted effort to not take the first mile too fast. A couple checks of my Garmin showed that I was in the 6:xx/mi range, so I tried to slow it down to the high sevens or low eights. About 0.8 mi into it I found my groove and seemed to be handling the hills well. I think it was not too far past the 1.0 mark that we entered the woods and I had to work to keep my pace. Lots of sharp turns and quite a few things to make everyone watch their step. A couple more loops and turns and we were heading back toward the track. The last tenth or so was on the track and finished into the chute.
Official time was 24:41 (PDF), crushing my previous PR of 26:05 from the SGACC 5K. That put me at 22 out of 57 runners. Definitely in the top half and fourth in my age group, missing a third place award by only about 16 seconds. They are supposed to post official results on the website in the next week or so.
Garmin GPS had me covering 2.97 miles in 24:41 (8:18/mi pace) with an average speed of 7.2 mph and a max of 9.9 mph. My 1-mile splits were 7:53, 8:49, and 8:13. So according to that the course was a little short, but considering it’s an official PIAA course, I’m going to blame some of that on tree cover and GPS accuracy.
There was a FOX43 film crew there, so I’m assuming the race will be on tonight’s news. I’ll have to check that out. :)
Awesome race today. I’m pumped.
I think it is really cool you got to run on a cross-country course, it sounds like it was a blast. Congrats on a new 5k PR, you are making some nice speed gains!
Hey Bill! Thanks!
Makes me wish I attempted to run XC in high school. :)
Nice work. That course sounds difficult. I am guessing you could break 23:xx on a nice flat course.