The Boys & Girls Clubs of Maine Patriots Day 5 Miler went off today at noon. This annual race has been a mainstay in Portland for 77 years now. This year is the first time that I have run it.

It was a fun race. The course is not particularly imaginative, but they do close off some roads which makes for a nice run. One person tried cutting through the course but they didn’t hit anybody. There was a fairly monstrous headwind from mile 1 through about 2.5, but the rest of course had that same tailwind or else was not overly effected one way or the other.

I wound up running about 2 minutes faster than I had expected to considering my haphazard training. I even outkicked a fellow Dirigo runner at the end, somehow.