Yesterday, I ran into my friend C at the beach, and she said, “Don’t forget, tomorrow’s the Frigid Fiver.”

For two years in a row I, in a fit of optimism brought on by fresh New Year’s resolutions, have promised to run the February Frigid Fiver with C. Last year, I forgot all about it, and I was hoping to repeat that performance. The words “February,” “New England,” and “road race” in combination do not conjure up a happy picture.

But this year, after publicly declaring my intention to Lose Weight, what could I do? I had to go.

Because of the freakish weather patterns, it wasn’t even that frigid. In fact, with temperatures hovering around 50, it was more like the Unseasonably Mild Fiver. I was wearing shorts and a long-sleeved t-shirt, and at the half-mile mark I was already beginning to wish I’d worn short sleeves.

We fell in quickly with a bunch of new recruits from our county sheriff’s department. They were wearing rain pants, dark jackets, and baseball caps; I figured they wouldn’t be running too fast for fear of heat exhaustion, and I was right. They kept us at a nice, steady pace, marked by a few military-style chants:

My grandmother’s ninety-one!
She does PT just for fun!
My grandmother’s ninety-two!
She does PT better than you.

Anyone who knows me well will be able to anticipate that by the time we got to “My grandmother’s ninety-three, she does PT better than…” I was correcting their grammar to “better than I.” Some habits die hard, even when on a five-mile run.

The sheriff and his sergeant kept circling back to get their newbies, which was encouraging. Although C and I had made a pact to walk if we needed to, I was motivated to run the whole way. I finished at a respectable (for me) 53:45. I even finished ahead of a number of the sheriff’s recruits — not just the 58-year-old woman, but a couple of the strapping young-twenties men and women, too.

It’s comforting to know that if I ever commit a heinous crime in this county, I can outrun about a third of the new deputies.

On the other hand, if I’m a victim of a crime, that might not be so comforting.