4th of July - AKA Great day

This morning was the Fire Cracker 4m in Saratoga Springs , NY. The plan was to get up at 645 and be on the road by 715, I was wide awake at 605 decided to lay in bed until 640 had some oatmeal and was on the road at 715 like planned. We got to Saratoga at 750 and hung out until 820 before going for a warm-up with the guys, got back and had to find a bathroom ( approx 3000 ppl) had to do some good recon. Found one in the city center, perfect got back to the tent and changed into flats before heading to the line. Got in some strides and tried to get to the line but people weren't moving, ended up in the 2nd-3rd row once the race went out I got pasted by a ton of people some kids wearing spikes (w/o the spikes in) Dick (ARE Coach) was at the half mile giving splits I heard 23x something but was more just trying to relax early with the heat. I came thru the mile in 5:17 (clocks on course didn't wear a watch) and started to move up pack by pack, at 2m (10:40) I caught up to teammates Eamon and Tony I started to work with them to close on the guys in front of us. A bit after 2.5 there is a nice down hill which I used to catch the final group I would get up to today, we rolled thru 3m (16:05) and I knew I needed to stay in contact and roll on the hill at 3.5 we also got a 5k split which was cool hit in (1640) PR on the year. When we hit the hill I was able to pass all of the people in the pack, in the final 500m one person came back on me but I was able to hold the rest of the group off to finish 23rd in (21:40) I was pretty pumped with the race we hit the course in reverse for a cool down and to cheer people in.

Afterwards we meet up with a co-worker grabbed some food and hit up the pool in saratoga, chilled there till about 5 headed back to saratoga to grab some dinner. At this point the wine bar next door to Jess's apt was open, and needless to say the hostess was smoking hot. We hit up a mexican joint for food then to plumb dandy for some frozen yogurt, we headed back to our co-workers to pick up our stuff from the race. Got a nice smile from said hostess and Jess hinted I should talk to her, made the decision I'd give her the digits. long story short....introducing myself to her was not the last time I talked to her that night...CA- CHING got her #....quite possibly best day of the year!