I’ve run this race once before in 2007 when I was still fresh to the racing scene. The Christmas City Classic is a 5 mile race with a large descent in the first mile which you must ascend in the final mile. As I’ve said before, hills are hard to avoid in this area, especially in Bethlehem. Just check out the elevation profile below. Ending with this kind of elevation in such a short race is not an easy task. Since I am a completely different runner than I was two years ago I knew that I would easily break that old PR (43:49) but I wasn’t expecting much from myself as far as what I am capable of doing. My only goal was to run a 38 minute at worst and a 37 minute race at best. This is not a PR course in regards to the distance. If you want to achieve your best possible 5 mile race this is not the race for you. It’s simply a local race which only a handful of locals show up to run from year to year.

I toed the line along with about 370+ other racers in the frigid, bone chilling 25° air and soon we were off. I had lined up toward the front and still had to weave my way through a bunch of runners, almost catching an elbow or two to the face. (Stinks being short sometimes.) Clicked off my first mile in 6:58 which I was a bit surprised about but my only plan for today was to take advantage of that hill in the beginning and fly down as comfortably as possible.

The rest of the race was relatively flat. That image below is a bit deceiving but if you look at the elevation, it’s broken down by 20 foot segments. After crossing the bridge over the Lehigh River and turning onto the streets we headed out along the railway tracks on a rather boring stretch of scenery. I remember the last time I raced this I felt like this section took forever but today it seemed to go by rather quickly. In fact, I remember the hills seeming bigger to me back then as well.

I developed a side sticker from mile 2-3 so I slowed down a bit and took it easy. Once that passed I picked up my pace again, hoping to make up for the slower pace on the hill that lay in front of me. Climbed up the on-ramp back to the bridge and then I had that final hill to tackle. My pace dropped way down to 8:25 on that hill but I picked it up again for a strong finish.

Final race of the year and a new PR.

Final time: 37:21 (Garmin – still awaiting final results) – 7:28 average pace
Official time: 37:22

Overall: 87/372 (23%)
Age group: 7/58 * (12%)
Gender: 25/196 (12%)

* age grouping was weird, 34-41. If I based my finish on a more normal 40-44 age grouping I came in 2/31 (6%.)

Christmas City Classic Elevation Chart

Just after the first half mile in the race I looked over and saw a woman running whom I recognized as the very same woman I ran alongside of at the Seaside Half Marathon in October. She had on the same hat and I recognized her gait. I asked her if she had run Seaside and she said yes and then she recognized me as well. Too funny! And even more funny, we’re carrying on a conversation while running a 7:00 pace. Crazy. Turns out she’s a local and we’ve run a few of the same races which must be why she looks so familiar to me. I’ll see her again at the Superbowl 10k as she’s racing that one as well. Small world, especially the running world.