I picked the Sullivan Farms Ice Cream John Carson 2-Mile in Chelmsford, having only recently determined that I could withstand a 2-mile race AND 2-mile warmdown back to the start.
To my delight, upon arriving at the Drum Hill Hannaford, I saw the two familiarest faces I could hope to see - CMS 'mates Pawlicki and Shairs. "Are you lost?" Joe asked.
After exchanging happy greetings, I collected my first race number since last May and we met back up for an easy warmup. The sun was out, the sky was blue and my goal was to improve upon the 11:48 2-mile (Garmin-measured) time trial I did last week.
Saw some fast faces in the crowd and tried to stay in the shade a bit beforehand.
They hit the two-thousand registered runners mark this morning, so they were a lot of folks milling around waiting for the start.
I tucked into the first/second row with Jim and Joe nearby. Right before they fired the gun, the RD called the whole crowd up to the "true" start, 10m or so ahead of where we were all bunched together. This gave us some breathing room, and then the gun went off.
I knew I'd be excited to go, and went out a bit harder than I should have, but, then again, it's only two miles. I eased off a little before the half-mile mark, which passed in 2:42. Joe had come up next to me and quickly pulled ahead.
Around the mile (5:32), Jim passed us both and we stayed in that order the rest of the way, with only the second female breaking up the CMS master's trio.
Jim was 11:01, Joe was 11:06, and I'll take an 11:07 and a scenic cooldown with those guys.
I think my uniform shrank in the drawer since 2014...
Full results here.
Caught Ruben back at Hannaford and got the race report from the lead pack perspective.
