Run For Roch 2008 Race Report

So I went home to Pitt PA to do the Run For Roch Memorial 5k. Roch was one of my really good friends who past away in 04 from a diving accident in a river in WV. I am happy to say that this year was the biggest yet with about 350 runners, pretty big by Pitt standards, and all the best runners came out for it. For a little flavor of a what a real Italian Pittsburgher is like here is a brief portion of the a conversation I had with Roch's mother after the race at the local pub. Me "So my fiance Laura would love to run this race, she loves anything that is painful and difficult." Roch's Mom " Ya, I na, guess that's why she's marring youz!" I know I walked into that one. Anyways I Google mapped the course http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2119806so that you can see the elevation changes. It's on Mt. Washington so that should be a clue as to the difficulty. It is a nasty course and I was in 3rd place about 5 seconds back from 1st and 2nd till the last hill and then proceeded to lose three places and even with a big kick still only got 6th place but ran a 25 second pr for the course 16:38. This being the Pittsburgh running scene, they don't exactly have immediate results but the guy who won ran 16:15 I think and 3rd place was 16:34 so I was in the mix but just not ready for those kind of hills. Winning wasn't exactly what this race was about for me so I was just a happy to see the race was still going strong and it was great to see some old friends.