Connie's 46th Birthday / Dick's Horse Radish 5K

• Marsha and I started our weekend off by going to Connie's birthday gathering at her house, it was open to most any runner that Connie knows so we got Jeannine to finally agree to go. Most there will not forget how sloshed and funny she was that night even though she forgot alot of that night, we stayed til midnight or later and we had a blast, runners are such a great group of people. I had plans to go run Dick's Horse Radish 5k in Canton Sunday , 1. because my friend Bill lives right on the course and he has driven here for many runs and 2. it was the second to last Subway race of the season and wanted to run one more. So being at a party with lots of runners I found a whole car load to go to Canton, Dan H., Connie, Chuck and I all went and had a pretty good showing. All four of us place in the top 25 with 312 runners. I followed Chuck off the line but we got split up in the crowd and he got by what Connie said about 20 seconds in front of me and that's where he stayed for over 2.5 miles, I was hoping to catch him but thought it wasn't gonna happen till the last half mile, he slowed just a bit and I was closing in but as the finish line neared I was almost right behind him and kinda tired and thought I'd wait til the end to try and make a move but in the last 30 yds. there was a 90 degree turn to the finish and I just couldn't get by then as Chuck sped up going in to the last turn, he knew someone was behind him he just didn't know it was me. Chuck was 15th, I was 16th with a 19:43, 1.5 seconds behind Chuck with Dan and Connie both less than 27 second back. I really think all the long runs, marathons, etc. have had a good effect on my speed as I hadn't done speed work in quite some time. Thanksgiving day I will need some speed as I will be racing Kyle in a 5K in the OBX.