Milton High School Boys Lacrosse Team 5k Fundraiser.
Had a decent race today. Local race - not a big crowd, perhaps less than 100 participants.
Pre-race warm up - felt bad. Temps were cool, but not bad. May have gotten to nearly 40 degrees by the time of the start, which was a really nice/civilized 11 am.
Did not ascertain much in the way of obvious fast runners except for one. He looked to be a high school cross country athlete. Race course map was non-existent. I figured out much of the course during my warm-up. As we stood awaiting the start, I asked a runner next to me if he knew the course, and he described it as if he'd run the race before. He appeared to be in my age division, and shot out quickly at the start - so I decided I would have to keep him close. The race had several of high school lacrosse team players (both boys and girls) who were bunched-up and goofing around in the first 600 meters. When we came to an early U-turn, I was in 6th place. The fast runner that noticed at the start had already gapped the field by 150 meters.
Gradually, I began to settle in and pick-off each of the runners in front of me. By the first mile split I was in 3rd place and tucked in behind the 2nd place runner who looked to be high school age. There was some wind that I allowed him to block, but I noticed he was weaker than me on the uphills, but faster than me on the downhills. Once I could see the turn-around at 2 miles and shouted some encouragement to the first place runner, I moved past the second place runner and headed back uphill. With a half mile left to go, I could not hear anyone behind me, and I could not see the first place runner ahead - so I was essentially running a time trial to finish up.
So - 2nd place overall, and first place in Masters. The winner was 18 years old. Did not post his time, but I suspect it was below 18 mins.
I was pleased with my first two splits: 6:18 and 6:21. Third mile split was slower at 6:59 but my perceived effort felt about the same - so I attribute the slow down to the long hill and essentially running by myself for the whole of that mile. I finished strong with a split of 6:14 per mile according to my watch for the last .1 My average pace was 6:33.
Overall I was happy with this. I competed well and with the exception of the 3rd mile split, I would have been extremely satisfied with the effort.
| 