A surprising outcome

I may have mentioned signing up for the Media 5 Mile Race, here in our hometown. It was the race's 30th anniversary and Jodie picked up the brochure - so, I figured it would be a good Friday evening workout - but, had very low expectations for my performance since I had never run in a competitive running event before.
When we showed up, I was a little intimidated by all of the "studs" (Jodie's word) hanging around. But, it was a beautiful evening and I figured I'd just have a nice run then have dinner downtown with our good friends the Andersons.
There were 1,200 entrants, so the start was a bit like the "running of the bulls". After about a half mile or so the crowd started to sort itself out - a nice little hill helped the process. Then, I discovered that the running coach at my Triathlon boot camp was right - most people use a lot of energy slowing themselves down on the down hill portions of the course. By just "free wheeling" down the hills and letting gravity do most of the work I started passing a lot of people - then holding them off on the uphills. By the half way point (two 2.5 mi. loops) I was clearly in the middle of the pack. Seeing Jodie there cheering me on was great encouragement.
By about mile 4 it seemed like I was running all alone - in front of the main "pack", but a fair bit behind the front "pack" (and WAY behind the "elite" runners). Over the last mile I was able to close that gap and work my way up to what I felt was a pretty respectable finish - at 37:10 minutes, well below my goal of 40 minutes.
Jodie noticed that she hadn't seen many if any of folks in my "age group" (50-54) finishing before me. Hmmm....
We had a great dinner at the Fellini Cafe. On Saturday I checked out the official results and I was shocked to see that I had finished 3rd of 61 runners in my age group! I was 161st of the roughly 1,150 finishers. Surprising.