RACE: Melbourne Art Festival 5K @21:40, Downtown Melbourne, FL

The Melbourne Art Festival Flamingo 5K was this morning. After a night dealing with the bad neighbor's barking dogs again (called the Brevard County Police Dispatch (321-633-7162) this time), I managed to wake up and head over to Holmes Park in time.

Before the race, I went to go pick up my number, and the staging area was very festive. And I took the opportunity to get my picture taken with Timmy Vee from WA1A:

Woo!
Also, I took pictures of the registration area, of the start/finish lines, and of the spread (which has always been abundant at this race!):

Anyways, the race is timed using the ChampionChip system, and this year there was a start mat, which really did make the start less crazy. The weather was nice (not so windy) but on the hot side. But there was a lot of motivation to keep running. I saw so many people that I knew from all over, and it really boosted my spirits.

On the way back over the causeway the second time, a co-worker started kicking it, so I had to up my pace just to keep relatively close to give myself the chance to kick it up the final stretch (which I knew I could do).

I finished in 21:40 (chip, which turns out being 7:00/mile pace! woo!), and Robin was there taking pictures and got me looking... um, spent:

Ha!
Anyways, I didn't run to my car to grab my camera, so no post-race pictures aside from the sweaty ceddy jumping pics:


And I bolted soon afterwards, not staying for awards, because I had to get cleaned up and back to the festival to volunteer.

Anyways, it was a good/better-than-expected race, and the festivities were fantastics. Much props to this year's race director!