Today I decided to pass on the Valentine Invite at BU and run the Bradford Valentine Road Race (results) instead. This last minute decision stems from their being 140 posted entries in the men's 5k at BU and the first heat not scheduled to start until 8:25pm. Though it would have been nice to get on Flotrack in the 5th or 6th heat of the 5k, I opted out due to the fact I haven't been feeling 100% over the past 2 weeks and racing at 9:30pm indoors in a hot building didn't seem to fit my m.o. at this point. I may try one last 5k indoors in 2 weeks at the USATF NE Championships at Harvard.

In today's race, I actually felt ok despite the conditions and hilly course. Bradford isn't terribly fast, in fact as if the hills are bad enough, miles 2-4 were completely slush (which didn't treat my flats too kindly). I have a feeling that that particular road stretching over those 2 miles hadn't seen a snow plow and instead was just sanded to melt any ice that would have formed. Regardless, it was a mess. I ran behind Whirlaway's Chris Mahoney and SISU's Matt Germaine for the first 3 miles, then made a move up the last set of hills to pull right behind Chris for the last mile. We ran together and basically finished together, with neither one of us really kicking it in. I put forth zero kick and instead settled for a nice workout in 26:22 for the 5.07 (note the .07 :) ) miles and 2nd place by 1 second.

These photos by Ted Tyler from Coolrunning

The entire photo set can be viewed here.