Twilight 5K Race Report

Wednesday night Mike and I ran the Twilight Run 5K benefiting the Alzheimer's Support Center. It has been a while for both of us to do a 5K instead of a 10, so our goals were to PR for this race.
This was the first time for this event, so we expected a couple snafus. The first one came even before we registered when I went to download a brochure from the website and found that only one side of the form was on the site - just not the side that told you when and where the run was being held. There was no check in times listed, so we just showed up when it seemed reasonable to arrive. They had only received a partial shipment of shirts, so mine was there and they will have to catch up with Mike's shirt later on (I know that is just killing the Tshirt whore, but he is taking it well).
The course started in Monterey park and was a flat out and back on the bike path. It was a small group of maybe 60 runners. The course was quick and I took off a little fast. After a mile I had to slow down a little to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest. I was feeling pretty good most of the way and began counting the people I passed so I knew about where I was in the pack. I started feeling like I had to pee about mile 1.5 but tried to will it away. I got to the turnaround and that is where I started counting again who was behind me. I counted at least 12, so that was pretty cool. I got another half mile down the road and knew I was not going to make it back to the park without a pit stop. I snuck behind a bridge footing near the river to pee. I was really bummed about it because it cost me 4 people in my lead and I had given it my all for so long there was not enough gas to try to pass them again. (I think I freaked one of them out - I could here her shouting out to ask if I was OK as I took off behind the footing - good thing she didn't try to follow!!) So anyhow I gave everything I had on the last bit back to the park and ended up with 32:09 for 3.23 on the Garmin, a 9:58 pace and a PR pace. I have no idea what place that left me in, I just know I was lower than 4th in my age group.
They had some problems with tallying the results by hand, but they eventually called Mike to the podium for a 3rd place age grouper- yeah MDot!
Tonight we are headed to Madison to drive the boy to Football Camp. We plan to do some riding or running while we are waiting, so that should be fun.