Instead of saturating my schedule with New York Road Runner races this season like most NYC runners, I have opted to do some events out east, mainly in Nassau County of Long Island. The Old Bethpage Village Restoration 5km is part of the Nassau Run Series. It is the first race of a four race series that leads up to the Long Island Marathon weekend in early May.

Due to the excessive amount of snow and challenging running conditions, my winter training has been more about getting workouts done than running high mileage. However, my low mileage these past couple of months mainly stems to shifting my focus towards cycling.

The race begins at 9am.
Actually, it was 8:58am according to my Garmin 610.

Sarah and I did our warmup, previewing the entire course and then some. We both almost slipped on some ice, which would have been a nightmare.

Anyway, I was expecting this course to be flat. Nope! In mile 1 and mile 3, there was this 60 foot climb.

Once the gun went off, it was a mad dash. Go figure. It felt like a 400m repeat before I it settled in. We hit the first hill and I was in 3rd. By the top of the hill, I had slotted myself in 2nd, where I remained for the rest of the race. After the hill, it was all flat until the second half of the course where we climbed back towards the base of the first hill to get back where we started (start and finish lines were the same).

My splits were consistent. Here’s what my Garmin caught:
1k – 3:34
2k – 3:35
3k – 3:32
4k – 3:37
5k – 3:35
= 17:53
Official time was also 17:53! Thank you Garmin for being so accurate!!

My teammate Sarah finished 4th overall and first female. She totally killed it! We did a long warm down, totaling our mileage at just under 10 for the day.

This was my first race of 2014 and it matched my 5k effort at my 2013 Coogan’s 5k result. However, I am now 5 pounds heavier than last year…

The second race of this series is on March 9 at Lido Beach (near Long Beach, right off the Loop Parkway).

Thanks for reading!
-Anthony

P.S.
Can you spot me in this starting line photo? Hint: I’m boxed in. (Something I need to work on)