| Date: | April 12, 2014 |
| Distance: | 4.4 km |
| Time: | 0:15:50 |
| Pace: | 0:03:36 minutes/km |
| Map: | here |
I had a good day today and finally pulled off the PyCon 5k victory.
We had a bit of a late start (half hour past the advertised start time), because the racer list came sorted by order of sign-up, or perhaps hashed order. Regardless of the order, it was only easily searchable by humans in O(n) time which made the registration process super slow. By 7:30 we finally had everyone signed up and at the start line.
The weather was fair and the course was _mostly_ straightforward. I went out with another guy in the lead for the first 2k with Jake VanDerPlaas trailing a bit behind us. At the first turn around, the course marshalls weren't exactly clear that we were supposed to turn around. I was in front by a bit and by the time he called us back, Jake had jumped in front, and I had to work hard to catch the other two. I did eventually and we proceeded in a 3-pack to the next turn-around.
And the end of another pier, where the second turn-around was, our number 2 guy was back in front by a step or two. He took a bit of a wider turn than he was supposed to (again... not very clear course marshalling), and I jumped ahead of him by a few steps. Jake started to trail at this point.
From here on out, I'm not sure how far behind the other two guys were. I tried to take advantage of the lead, knowing that there was no more uncertainty in the course... we _just_ had to make it back. So I pushed it, and eventually started to hear lighter and lighter footsteps behind me. By the end, I think that I had opened up by a couple hundred meters. I still pushed it hard to the finish, but I was glad that it was a short course, because I was done-ers.