After a year of races every month, a combination of weather, travel, sickness, and general lack of free time conspired to keep me off the race course for a few months at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, so I was happy to get back into it in March for this St. Patrick’s Day-themed race, with plenty of people in costume, in Watertown (though it actually started in Oakville).

After a pretty mild winter, this seemed like it might be the first race of spring. Instead, after a light snow the day before, temperatures dropped to about 15°F, and I geared up for one of the colder races I’d ever run.? Watertown is another one of those Naugatuck Valley towns, one with an exit that I’d always noted but never taken. There are so many towns like this: railroad tracks, steep downtown streets, a mill in the process of being redeveloped.?

The race was 3.5 miles, and that extra .4, when added to the three months without racing, really added up. It was hilly and tough, and I felt slow in general, but it was good to get back to racing.

Shamrock Shuffle | 3.5M | 3/11/17 | 28:06 | 38/169