Peaks 5-mile road race report

Earlier this week, my friend Jen told me about a 5-mile race on Peaks Island that several members of the Midcoast Tri club were doing this weekend.

Race? Island? MTC? OK, I’m game.

Tony and I set out from Lewiston at 6:45 am and drove to Portland … missing the 7:45 am ferry by minutes. That was OK because there was plenty of room for us on the 8:45 am ferry, which gave us plenty of time to arrive and register before the 10:30 am race.

I registered. My bib was a lucky number. 🙂


447 is the street number of my childhood home. I took this as a good sign.

I had never done a 5-mile race before, but I have done an 8k, which is just a little shy of that distance. That race was in Florida, in the early part of summer when I wasn’t accustomed to the heat. It was also a year ago. So yesterday was my day for a stunning PR.

This distance is hard. It’s a little long for a sprint, but short for a distance race. You have you push yourself, but you can’t run at your max pace. I don’t have a lot of experience racing at this distance, and I have to say, I don’t really care to get a lot of experience racing at this distance. The allure was the friends and the scenery — and both of those were well worth it.


(That’s Mary, Wanda, Jen and I on the Ferry leaving Portland. What foxy ladies!)

It was a rough week for me this week. I was sick in the middle of it and my training was all over the place because of racing the weekend before and missing time to recover from my cold.

And the weather was not conducive to a good race, either. The race started at 10:30, it was in the high 70s/low 80s and partly sunny. The course was not very shady (but they never are, are they?)

In the end? 43:26 official time.

My watch time was 43:10 — this was a gun time course, not chip time at the start. Le splits:

1- 8:55.34 (nice and easy)
2- 8:38.14 (picking up the pace a bit)
3- 9:02.28 (wtf happened there?)
4- 8:38.91 (back to my happy pace)
5- 7:55.80 (bringing it home for the win)

I think my average pace in the 8k was 9:46 miles, so I am very happy with this improvement!

I know it’s a bit slower pace than my 5k PR (which was 7:55 pace) but that day was not the day to have that race.

Have I mentioned how much I loved this race? It was beautiful, and totally worth the exorbitant cost of taking the ferry over to the island. After the race, Tony and I rented bikes and circled the 4-mile perimeter of the island, and I got to relive all the places we passed on the race. At least a mile of it is running along the ocean looking at the beautiful Portland skyline.

I could totally see traveling just to do this race. It was just the excuse we needed to go to Peaks Island.

Location:Coburn St,Lewiston,United States

Pattie Reaves

About Pattie Reaves

I'm a new mom and renegade fitness blogger at After the Couch. I live in Brewer with my husband, Tony, our daughter Felicity, and our two pugs, Georgia and Scoop.