Had a pretty good race today in the 2nd annual Polar Opposite Peachtree - in which they ran the reverse direction of the Peachtree Road Race that is on July 4. Last year the weather I am told was quite cold and worthy of the race name - today it was in the upper 40s to low 50's cloudy with a misting rain at times. I met up with Ben who I run with on Saturdays sometimes in Milton - and two of his friends from Dunwoody where he resides. Two of those guys are in the 40's and a good bit faster than me - but I was just pleased to be placed in the same starting corral as them. There were about 7250 participants which is a far cry from the 50000 runners in July's version.
I found the course more challenging in this direction at least this morning having never run the route this way. There's a gradual uphill in the first mile, a good sloping / rolling downhill in mile 2, with a much steeper downhill in mile 3, but a very long and arduous uphill from 3 miles almost all the way to about 5.5 miles where it finally flattened out and maybe gave a slight down slope in the final half mile.
I ran pretty well without really too much of a plan, other than to run to feel and to try to compete a little. My first mile was my slowest at 7:31 but then the ensuing two downhills had splits of 6:45 and 6:55; and then 7:07 uphill, 7:23, 7:07 and 6:38 for the last .2 miles. Heartrate was just below tempo at 158 avg but never exeeded 166.
I connected with Ben and Danny afterward, and they both ran well, at 39:14 and 41:15 respectively. Ben took 4th in his age group and Danny took 2nd. I was nevertheless very pleased that at 16 years older than Danny I was just less than 4 or so minutes slower than them. I will take that any day.
I ended up running about a minute twenty seconds faster than my Peachtree effort in July. Granted it was much warmer than today - but I am not sure how much of a difference that made.
Good way to start out the year.
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