Igy, thanks for that sentiment. Official results have been posted (with chip times included), so here's my race report:
When my wife and I arrived at the race, there was already a long line for the port-a-johns. I REALLY had to pee, and, of course wanted to take care of the "other," (hadn't yet before the hour-plus drive). Jogging a couple miles helps to get things "moving," so I decided to do my warmup with a full bladder, then wait in line to take care of both issues before the start.
After my warmup, the port-a-john line was even longer. But I had 30 minutes, so was only a little worried. But with just 5 minutes left, I was still a long ways back in line.
So, I bagged it, and ran into the sponsor's building to check the status of the single john there. Ahh, thankfully, only had to wait for one person, but by then I had less than a minute to the start!
I finally finished up and exited the building to the singing of the national anthem, and hurriedly worked my way into the assembled crowd, but was still a long ways back from the starting line when the gun went off.
It was disconcerting to see a hundred runners stretched WAY out ahead of me. I tried to remain calm, and work my way up to where I should be. I was hoping to average about 6:30 per mile, so was satisfied to hit 1-mile at 6:29 (gun time). I didn't check my watch as I crossed the starting line, so didn't know that my first mile was actually 6:18!
I felt a little stiff and uncomfortable, but continued with 6:29 for the second mile. By then I had caught two guys running together at a steady and reasonable pace, so I settled in behind them to "recover" a bit with a 6:35 third mile.
One of the fellows with me dropped off pace, so it was just a 20-something and me running together. I mostly followed, or ran alongside him.
Quite a ways ahead of us was a woman and a gray-haired man. We made incremental, but steady gains on them. The young guy with me pulled ahead, but my focus then was on the gray-hair. My concern was that he might be in my age group. As I tried to chase gray-hair down, I pulled even with the youngster again, then continued on past him.
I'm not sure what happened to the woman. She disappeared somewhere ... maybe part of one of the 3 x 5K relay teams.
Finally, somewhere past 8 miles, I caught gray-hair. I increased my pace slightly to discourage him from latching on, as we acknowledged each other with a shared "hey there." From there, I just tried to maintain a steady, hard pace. My race warmups always include the final mile of the course, so I knew the last four turns and how to gauge my efforts.
Came through the finish line at 1:00:10. Chip time was 59:59. First M55-59. Tenth overall. Fifth master. Age grade percentage of 82%.
Chip time splits were 20:08, 19:56, 19:55, so an actual average of 6:26 per mile. Mile splits were 6:18, 6:29, 6:35, 6:25, 6:22, 6:28, 6:28, 6:28, 6:24 (avg for last 1.3).
I was very pleased with that, especially considering that as recently as last November, I couldn't break 20 for just ONE 5K!