Hot Chocolate 5K -- Sun. Dec. 5

Late night after several post-long run naps, but up and sorted in time to leave at 8:40 (a tad late...). Icy morning, hard frozen windscreen, but head for Btown DnD for a coffee and bagel to go. Drive is fast, so parked on King St and jogging back to the registration by ten past nine. Cold! Quite a melée at the start, but able to grab bib/chip combo easily enough, and then check out the portaloos: hopeless! Line several hundred people long, so give up and jog back to car, figuring I'll try DnD there. Buy another coffee as they have no Gatorade (feeling quite dry, and didn't get up early enough for breakfast), use facilities (thank goodness no opposition there) and back to car to change.
Only 20 mins to go, so kit up in hat, gloves, shorts and t-shirt, then leg it towards the start. Follow to rail trail and jog out there for a bit, bypassing the actual race start, then stop a while to stretch. Total just over 2 miles of warm up, and with some press-ups I'm *sort of* warm by 9:55, so go to line up.
No familiar faces to line up against, so keep an eye on Tim M as he'll be sure to wind through the opening rush fast. Chip timed, so it doesn't matter too much. . . Off and up the first little hill, already in a fast group though surely 100+ people ahead of me. Try to settle but feeling very stiff. Wind is an obstacle too, on and off. Make it to the first mile surprisingly quickly, 6:00, it just flew by; mile two seems harder, but I'm managing not to lose any places, even gaining one or two.
Mile three starts even harder with a couple of savage little uphills; fortunately I have strength enough for them, so lose another follower, but then people start making moves for the finish. Didn't have enough margin to pick up pace much, but get into a to and fro with one tall guy who I thought was Barry B from UMass at first. Finally we head down the hill and I'm ready to open up but nervous about how much further there is. Once I spot the turn down off the main street pick up a bit and then as the shute comes into view go all out and barrel past the tall guy, watching 19:06 show on the clock as I hit the line.
A mite disappointed, but it seems about right, given my stiffness from yesterday's 12+.

However, later in the day results are posted and *chiptime* shows I was faster -- by ONE SECOND -- than last year's chiptime. Technically, 1.06 seconds:

Time: 18:59 and 94/100 (official) <--new PB!
Distance: 3.1 (official; 3.14 GPS)
Pace: 6:08s

Comment: w00ts! It's a tiny difference, but I'll take it any day: into the 18:00s!! Came in 61/2000+ which is pretty fine too. Saw Landry to talk to (briefly) and Maddie G from BHS, but then finished my cocoa and headed back to car: too cold to hang around. Put more gear on and did a cooldown to end up with 7.43 miles total for the day. Good enough.