With the kids off bowling, my mom accompanied me to my fifty-first race, not far from Hartford, about an hour from home. It was a benefit for the local high school track team, and the course was the team’s 5K course, around the baseball field and across fields and forests behind the school. It was a fairly tough course—the race director called it “fair and challenging”—especially in the heat. I think it was the first race I’ve run that was almost completely on grass, and was made up of a series of loops that some people got a little confused by (and finished without having run the whole thing). It was my first race in awhile and it felt good to get back into it, though it was a little slow.

Bolton XC Alumni Classic | 5K | 8/19/17 | 25:49 | 51/169