The first test

Miles to date: 141

The road race has come and gone. This year the race was spectacular, the weather was ideal: mid-70's, slightly overcast, with a strong breeze coming off the water; and the crowd was in top form.

For those of you who haven't run Falmouth before, it has some of the strongest crowd support that I have ever seen. Spectators line the race course for the entirety of the race, sometimes five or six people deep. The crowd can pick you up and carry you when you feel like stopping and push you when you're questioning the wisdom of sprinting up the hill at Falmouth Heights.

Strong showing this year from the entire unlikeliest team. Roger and Steph both came down for the race and we had special guest appearances from Drew and Evan.

I logged a time of 0:58:51 and was thrilled with my time in the race. I managed to beat my previous best time of 1:06:38 (2009) by almost eight full minutes. This was my first real test since I've started training for the marathon and it is nice to see that the hardwork that's been put in is adding up to something. I came into the race hoping to beat an hour but not really expecting to. An easy start in my corral and solid pacing helped a lot in that regard. Due to the sheer number of runners, where you begin in your corral can have a huge impact on your time, if you start too far back or have too many people going slow in front of you, the first mile or two can be spent bobbing and weaving through people, using up precious time and energy. Based off of my 10K split from the New Bedford Half Marathon, I was able to qualify into one of the higher groups, which helped a lot.

Evan just got a number ten days ago and had not been training very much prior to that, despite this, he put in a great effort and ended up running just over an hour for the very hard, difficult to navigate seven mile course.

Drew put in a great time, despite feeling like crap throughout the majority of the race. Him limping up to the meeting point with bags of ice was one of my favorite sights of the race. Drew also had the line of the day when he described my running style as "You ever see a truck moving without wheels? Kinda like that."

Roger and Steph both did great during the race. This is Roger's second engagement at Falmouth and he improved his time substantially from two years ago. Steph out up a really strong time as well.

There will be some pictures to come in the next few days. All of which are very flattering, especially the ones where I'm gasping for air in the last half mile.