December 2016 Running Challenge

I ran the "Course de l'Escalade" today - most crowded race I ever did!
It's a race of either 2 or 3 loops (4.8km/7.3km) in the old town of Geneva, and aparently very popular - I even read that this year they weren't admitting people who ran in 2014 or 2015, to give more new people a chance to join. There were different races: mens 3 loops, womens 2 loops, mixed 2 and mixed 3 loops. I wanted to run three loops, so I signed up for the "mixed 3". Along with 3500 other people...
It's a rather hilly race (155m elevation for the 7.3km course according to the race website), so I plugged my last 5k time into a race time predictor, which told me I should be able to run the distance in 41min; and added 30seconds for the hills. So my goal pace was 5:40min/km, with the secret hope that I could finish faster, since the 5k time was from a virtual race I ran on my own, without race day atmosphere.

There was a lot of race atmosphere, but actually that was more of a source of frustration at the beginning. I only found out after signing up that the men/women only races were started in multiple seperate blocks depending on predicted finishing time, while the mixed races were done as mass start. That was insane, there were simply too many people!
The crowds made the first loop rather horible. Even zig-zagging like crazy it was hardly possible to overtake anyone; and there were plenty of runners that were frustrated enough about that to try and force their way past everyone else. I've never gotten so many (or even any) elbow jabs in a race, that didn't lift my mood at all. It took nearly 2km for things to get a little better. Towards the end of the first loop that the field had opened up enough that I could mostly run at my intended pace with only a little bit of weaving.
The second and third loop were gradually turning out to be more fun. Once I stopped freaking out about being trapped in a horde of people and desperately trying to find openings to pass, I could enjoy the atmosphere. I've never been in a race with so many enthusiastic spectators either - so much shouting and cheering, wow! And the fact that the race was done in the late afternoon in the dark, and the old town is decked in christmas lights, that was nice too.

According to the official results, I ran the three loops in 16:18 / 14:07 / 13:06. I think I could have finished the race ~2 minutes faster if the first loop hadn't been so crammed. At least for the last 5km, my average pace was 5:34min/km, I'm happy enough with that.

Once I stopped running, it started getting really cold. I don't ususally like sports drinks, but tonight I grabbed some heated peach-flavoured stuff to keep warm, because I wanted to watch the start of the costume race that was the last event of the day. Some costumes were really amazing. My favourite was a group of three people running as a volcano