Holyoke St. Patrick's Day 10k

This is a race that I've done several times and watched almost every year for my whole life. My mother's family lives in Holyoke, and this race weekend is always a big event in our family. I got a ride to Holyoke Saturday morning with a friend and her husband who was also doing the race. We arrived at my grandparent's house, changed into our running clothes, and jogged down for the 1:00pm start. It was a beautiful day for a run and as always there were lots of people out. I started at the 8 minute mile pace marker, which I knew was too far back but I was with my family and wanted to start with them. It took me about half a mile to get past the crowd of slower runners ahead of me, and once I did I started running pretty fast to try to make up for lost time. Miles 2 and 3 are mostly uphill, and then the second half is mostly downhill - both are difficult in their own ways. I was hurting for most of the race, which I saw as a good sign, and I felt like I was running about a 7 minute pace. I crossed the finish line in 43:17 with a net time of 42:52. I was the 21st female out of 2384, which is cool. It was a good race for me overall. I was a bit sore the next day, but an easy 4 mile run got me feeling back to normal.