Every morning for the past few months, I've gingerly stepped out of bed and taken a good 5 to 10 minutes to let the tendons and muscles in my calves and feet get warmed up. I'll sit up in bed, and very carefully make sure I don't step on Raleigh as I shuffle into the kitchen to make my morning coffee. This Thursday, I cut the second part of my tempo just a little bit short due to some tightness in my left achilles. That was a smart move, made smarter by keeping my Friday and Saturday running very easy to ensure a small problem didn't become a big one. And so I was very pleased with myself for taking the smart approach, and I was rewarded on Sunday morning. I woke up, gingerly stepped out of bed, but this time with very little tightness in my legs. In fact, I was feeling quite spry!
Anywho, Elizabeth and I got a nice early start to the day, and we both got in a good warm up. Terry witnessed me forcing Elizabeth to do a handful of strides to get the legs turning over and, moreso, to burn off nervous energy. Elizabeth, in particular, was feeling very anxious, but I think the strides helped. Since she wasn't particularly interested in doing strides she went from nervous about the race to annoyed with me...mission accomplished!...
When the gun went off, my goal was to hang on to the back of the first pack for a bit and see who was going to settle into what pace. I felt comfortable and was hanging in about 13th place for the first mile+. Entering mile two, I passed one runner and was subsequently passed by another (Robert Jackman).
Just before passing the two mile mark, I could see that the race had started to string out and I was in danger of entering no-mans land. Mr. Jackman had put about 15 meters on me, and an HFC runner was about 15 meters ahead of him. I focused on closing that 15 meter gap. As Stephen Peckiconis passed me going into the turn around he gave a helpful shout out to let me know I was in 11th place.
I had made up a good chunk of ground and threw in a surge to get up on his shoulder. Both he and I were closing in on the HFC runner, and as we were coming even I put in a quick surge. I passed the two of them quickly, and created a small gap - curious if they would go with me.
There was a quirky section of the course where we had to take a sharp right turn on a sandy/muddy section, followed quickly by another sharp left turn around, I forget what it was - a big pile of snow maybe? In any case, there was an obstruction and I made another surge when I was out of site to try and catch them off guard just a bit.
From here to the finish, I had my eyes on a CMS runner who was about ~25 meters ahead of me. I kept trying to throw in surges where I would run hard for 10 steps, counting off the number of times my left foot hit the ground, and I would blur my vision just a bit When I re-focused, the CMS runner's lead hadn't changed. THE HECK!?
I was probably a bit over cautious with the tricky footing during the last downhill section, but I don't expect it made much of a difference.
9th place in 27:48 and moved up to a tie for 7th place in the Pub Series. Eli also moved into 9th place in the series with her time of 35:30. CSU is doing well in the series so far. I think with the nicer weather finally arriving, we will all be hitting our stride with a bit more steady training & health, and we can all move up in the rankings!
Garmin Splits:
5:34
5:41
5:25
5:29
5:23
.06-16s
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