18:44.86.
That was my time for the Dime McCarren 5K. It worked out to 6:02 a mile.
I finished 27th out of 683 people, 26th out of 355 men, and second in the men's 40–49 group. The official result listed North Brooklyn Runners beside my name.
Good morning in the neighborhood.
McCarren is not a place I needed to travel to or learn for race day. The park sits between Williamsburg and Greenpoint. I had run there, worked out there, crossed it, and passed it during ordinary life for years.
Then somebody puts up a start line and the familiar park becomes a race course.
A local 5K is a funny distance. It is short enough that every small mistake feels expensive and long enough that the first mile can still make the other two miserable. There is no long middle where the day can quietly reorganize itself. You start, get uncomfortable, and keep going until the clock stops.
This clock stopped under nineteen minutes.
The age-group line was new. I was 40, so the race put me with men from 40 through 49. I finished second.
I do not need to turn that into a big story about getting older. I had a birthday. The timing system changed the category beside my name. The pace was still the pace.
Three months later, South Nyack used a narrower M40–44 group for its ten-miler. I won that group in 60:53. The two races were different distances with different fields, but they made a decent little pair: under nineteen minutes close to home, then a little over an hour farther up the Hudson.
McCarren also put North Brooklyn Runners on the result. Earlier years of my running life were tied closely to Prospect Park Track Club. By 2024, I was racing this one with NBR beside my name.
That felt right for the location. The park is in North Brooklyn. The race was full of people from the local running community. I could finish, cool down, and go back to the rest of a normal Saturday without a hotel checkout or a flight home.
The whole thing took 18 minutes and 44.86 seconds.
Second in the age group.
Then McCarren went back to being the park.