Polar Bear 5K Race Report

Pat Englehardt and I ran the Polar Bear 5K Saturday morning, Feb. 14 at 9 am in Portland. The weather was cold! In the 20's and worse yet, a strong breeze to really cool things off. Well, we pre-registered, so the money was already spent, so we showed up, picked up our numbers along with about 250 other wack jobs (Seriously. It's still very much winter in Maine. We're nuts, but we were surrounded by like-minded crazies. There is comfort in the mob) . After a brief warm-up we were off. Actually, the race MC was a bit too wordy for my taste. Thanking everybody and anyone he could think of. Kinda like a bad wedding toast after a few too may glasses of champagne. Finally, they let us race and I lead Pat for about 50 yards and then the youngin' took over and ran away from me. He's getting stronger and I'm getting older (I think my gut also has something to do with it. See lean and mean Pat and then me busting through my XL t-shirt in the picture in front of the mini-van.)
Pat finished in about 22:30 and I finished about two minutes behind Pat. If the weather was better, I bet Pat may have finished sub-22. He had a good race. The course was windy and surprisingly hilly for a coastal town. All told it was a good training day and even fun if you like the feeling of intense muscle burn. I do.
I may do another 5k sometime before April. Maybe I can rope in my sister to do one when she comes for a visit in March and Pat is always game. I'd like another shot to redeem myself anyway before the bike season comes along. I'll post a link to the offical results when they come along.