Percy Sutton Harlem 5K

As part of my week long 40^th birthday celebrations in New York I entered a race to do on the morning of me turning into a veteran runner. I picked a 5k race that wouldn’t take too much to prepare for – or recover from.
With an 8:30am start, Evelyn and I made our way to the start perhaps a little too early, and had plenty of time to warm-up. With 85% humidity and temperatures creeping towards 74degress (it’s still only 8am btw) it didn’t take long to indeed warm up. In fact, by the time I toed the starting line I was already saturated in sweat, and dripping over the locals who seemed a little more acclimatised to, and composed in, the early morning sunshine. We were treated to a trumpet version of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ before the race start, and a few speeches from local dignitaries who encouraged the runners and spectators to join in the chants of “Drop the Guns! Stop the Violence!”  (Perhaps introduce a similar feature at the next Nigel Barge?)
The course was a lot hillier than I imagined it would be, and coupled with a fair bit of congestion to begin with, the first 2k was a relatively restrained affair. I ultimately finished a lot further down the field than I have been used to recently – but that’s more down to the large number of quality runners who had turned out for what I think may have been a points accumulator for NY Marathon qualification.
 
138^th – Gordon Curran – 18:27
2367^th – Evelyn Curran – 30:25
full results

my garmin stats