The heat of summer was supposed to break due to some thunderstorms that came through last night. Well, that didn’t happen. This morning (thank God for a 9AM start) it was over to Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts for the Narragansett Summer Running Festival. The festival featured a half-marathon, a 10K and a 5K race and having not done a 5K in a while I decided when registering to select the 5K.

Stonehill College is a scenic, New England Catholic College with beautiful grounds and the 5K race was supposed to be self-contained within the campus. Unfortunately, the race took two wrong turns and the course for a while exited the campus. There was a bit  of confusion for those of us closer to the front of the pack but I basically just put my head back down and kept on running. The course felt long while running, but I figured it might have just been the heat. Upon finishing, the consensus was the race was about 3.4 miles long rather than 3.1 miles. Kudos to the race director for coming over after the race and talking with runners individually and then making an announcement apologizing. When I spoke with the race director I assured him the race was still awesome.

The course was a mixture of both pavement and compact dirt trails throughout the campus. A good uphill both started and finished the race and kept you honest chugging up the hill with the heat beating down just shy of the 3 mile mark.

The festival was absolutely brilliant for a first year run complete with plenty of vendors, food, live music and Narragansett Beer. The Narragansett Summer hit the spot after the race and seemed to be the fan favorite post-race.

I finished the Naragansett Summer Running Festival 5K with a time of 25:16 which officially put me at 8:07/miles. Adjusted for the additional distance, my per mile time was 7:25.

The Narragansett Summer Running Festival was a great run and certainly will be one that I will be back to next year!