Ohio Police & Fire 5K

Today I decided to drive to my hometown for the 5th Annual Ohio Police & Fire 5K in downtown Warren, Ohio. Even though I am still getting back on track after running the Cleveland Marathon and not really in tip-top shape for a 5K, I decided to give it a whirl. This is one of my favorite 5K races since the course is run on my old training grounds, plus they offer quality t-shirts and refreshments afterwards.

So... during the week I tried to put together a team of 5 people like I had done in the past (this race has team competition based on cross country scoring). I was able to get Pat Dillon and Eric Pustay to agree early on. Eric said that he had a friend (Lance Ronghi) that would run with us, which gave us 4 people on our team. Now we just needed to find one more person on the day of the race. When we all met up the morning of the race Eric saw another runner he knew (Greg Mickel) that said he would join us, so now we were ready to go!

As the race began, the runners up front pulled me along and I could tell that once again this would be another 5K where I was going out a little too fast... When I reached the first mile in 6:18 I knew that the last couple of miles would hurt! However, my breathing was doing fine. It was just my legs that felt a little tired. The 2nd mile I slowed up but was still able to do it in 6:57. Now I just kept telling myself to hang tough for the last mile. The last mile is really flat except for a pretty big hill that leads you out of this city park and into downtown for the finish. Once I got to the top of that hill I gathered myself and finished the last mile in 7:28, which gave me a 21:20 finish time and an average pace of 6:53. I was very happy with my time considering that I had not done much speedwork lately and was glad that I made it out for the run this morning.

The rest of our team did great as well. Lance Ronghi finished 2nd overall with a time of 17:17. Greg Mickel finished 3rd overall with a time of 17:22. Pat Dillon finished 4th overall with a time of 17:39. And Eric Pustay finished 24th overall with a time of 21:17.

Here's a picture of the medal that we each recieved for placing 2nd out of all teams...

I was also given a nice award for placing 2nd in the Male 25-29 age group... (kind of looks like me huh?)

Click Here to view complete results or Click Here to check out more pictures from the race