Titans 5k Road Race

On Monday May 31st I headed down to Pembroke, MA for the Pembroke Titans 5k (results). Greg Zopatti, a former high school foe from Weymouth, and UMass Amherst teammate is the Pembroke High Track and XC coach and he invited me down for this race. After I got all signed up and such I headed out for a warm up over the course with Brian Cronin(Former UMass teammate, and another former High school foe from Weymouth), and Courtney Wilk. It was great talking to Brian and hearing about how other guys from the UMass days were doing. Soon we were back from our warm up and it was time to get in racing mode. After putting on my racers I headed over to the starting line for some last second strides. After a few instructions from Greg, who was riding in the back of the lead truck, it was time to race.

As the race went off we had a lead pack of John Noland (a super star master runner), Brian Cronin (AKA Randy Dangerous in the results), Wesley Gallagher (very fast highschool miler), and myself. We followed the lead truck, which was playing some great music, on the downhill first mile. Which caused us to go out pretty quick and within the first 1/2 mile or so I was in the front leading the train down the hill. At the bottom of the hill we made a right onto High Street which is where the course levels out and rolls for a bit. I was still pressing the pace pretty good and I could still feel someone right on me. I figured it was either John Noland or Brian Cronin. But I was not going to look, I figured I would just press on and try to break whom ever it was. I found out after the race that it was actually the high schooler Wesley Gallagher who was on my tail. Just before we made our next turn there was a slight uphill to contend with. I did my best to maintain a solid pace and pushed up the hill pretty hard. This where I first noticed I had a gap on Wesley and I pushed on even harder to make sure I put this race away right here. After making the right onto the appropriately named Mountain Ave you have a bit of a downhill and flat before hitting the biggest hill on the course. This gave me a chance to recover a bit and get ready to tackle the monster hill that was coming up at around 2 miles in. I hit the hill and tried to maintain a hard but relaxed effort, I figured at this point that I had the race won, as long as I did not blow up or do anything stupid. I crested the top of the hill and got a brief rest on the flat section afterwards. Soon I made another right hand turn onto Center Street and headed back towards the start/finish area. The course here maintains a gentle up hill and I just made sure to keep a solid pace going till I got to the finish. I arrived at the finish line in 15:34 good for first place and $100. A nice way to start the day. John Noland actually caught Wesley on the way to the finish for second place in 15:56. Wesley finished in 16:03 for third place.

I was pretty happy with this race. It was nice to get out there and be able to run fast and also do it pain free. The knee issue I had going on seems to be under control and feeling good. This was a fun little race on a nice challenging course. Thanks to Greg, Infa, and Rick for putting on a great race! Thanks to my brother Ryan and my niece Calleigh for coming to check out my race and cheeer me on!

Also check out Southshoreracing.com a great website that Infa is working on. Its dedicated to the racing scene on the south shore from highschool track and XC to road racing.

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