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I ran in the the Hershey Company’s 4th Annual Chocolate Miracle 5K Race this morning, which raises money to support the Children’s Miracle Network. The race was held on the roads of the absolutely beautiful campus of the Milton Hershey School. The weather was close to perfect, about 60 degrees and a very slight breeze.

My training had been sort of a mixed bag in the weeks leading up to the race. I’ve had a few workouts that were great, but also missed a bunch of sessions, or had to make them much shorter than desired due to travel or work issues. I’m hoping to start attending the Tuesday speed-work sessions held at the track in Camp Hill once I can reign in my work related travel a bit.

My main goal for the race was to break 20 minutes, so I was shooting for a pace of just under 6:26 per mile.

The start was a bit chaotic (a big mix of people of varying speeds near the front, including a guy with a jogging stroller(who ended up being pretty fast and very courteous, but the stroller did seem out of place at the front of the starting line)), but within about two minutes people started spreading out. The first half mile or so was flat, and then a very slight incline for a bit over a quarter mile. My GPS based mile split was 6:21 and I was feeling very comfortable. The second mile started with a nice gradual downhill and then flattend out taking us back near the starting line. I hit the GPS based two mile mark at 12:45 (6:24 split) and while I could definitely feel the effort increasing, I still felt it was a pace I could hold pretty steady.

Just past the two mile point, I noticed some crumpled money on the road as I passed by it. Right before the race started, I had seen some money slightly sticking out of the back pocket of one of the runners who I had noticed at a bunch of HARRC events. It seemed like the money was still in his pocket far enough it would stay put, but when I saw the money on the ground during the race I thought it was very likely his. I did a quick u-turn of about 5 feet and picked it up. I don’t think this cost more than a second or two.

The third mile included some slight hills, but they were pretty short. I was planning on trying to kick as hard as as I could for the final quarter mile or so (thinking this would start at about 18:25 into the race), so I was really surprised when I noticed the finish line coming up much sooner than anticipated. My final time was 19:07, good enough for 15th place out of 187 runners. It turned out the course was a bit short, almost exactly 3 miles (probably 3.01 – 3.02 based off my GPS and talking to some of the other finishes based off their times or GPSs).

While I do wish the course had been more accurate, I’m definitely happy with my effort. The pace that I averaged was 6:22 per mile, which equates to a roughly 19:50 “true” 3.1 mile race and I was really pleased that I had very even splits (and I was able to return the money to the guy who lost it).

Update: Thanks for Nate Powell for emailing me two pictures he took during the race.

Update2: It has been a week since the race and I still can’t find the race results posted online, I just emailed the race director via the active.com link. I’ll let people know if I hear back or find the results somewhere.

Update3: Received an email that the results are now online: http://www.hmc.psu.edu/cmn/events/pdfs/RaceResults.xls 

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 7:01 pm and is filed under running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.