CASA 5K – First Race with Team GS1

201304CASARunGroupOn Saturday April 28, I ran my first race as a Princetonian. The “CASA” in the title CASA 5K stands for “Court Appointed Special Advocates”, and their race benefits their organization’s work to address the needs of Mercer County children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse and/or neglect and are living in out-home-placements. Great cause.

I assessed fairly well my out-of-shapeness, and ran an appropriately-moderate pace that saw each mile split a bit faster than the one before.  Somehow, I was 8th overall (21:04 – 6:46/mi), despite the pounds I’ve added recently  (results: http://www.compuscore.com/cs2013/april/casa.htm).  More detail …

The race was run, super-conveniently, around my GS1 offices, southwest of Princeton. Andrew Hearn from our staff helped to organize a wonderful group of runners and walkers from GS1 to enjoy the gorgeous day, get some exercise and raise money for CASA. Team GS1 did well, and hopefully had as much fun as I did.

Check out the age and place distribution in the results  -  one of the stangeest that I’ve seen.  In the top 1o, there are 3 x 15-19s, 1 x 20-29, 1 x 30-39, 2 x 40-49, and 3 x 50-59.  Perhaps this is not that strange for a small race (less than 200 finishers).

Met some nice people at the race, include a bunch of masters runners from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.  We had a number of common acquaintances from my days as a geophysicist.

I finished the run motivated to plan for more races, get back in shape, and find some other runners to run with, at least once in a while.

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