Woke up this morning, felt out my foot, and decided I was go for the community race this morning before the high school meet. This is a very cool course, run at the middle school next to Richland High. The middle school sits on top of a long, very steep hill before leveling off to the pancake-flat athletic fields. They run 3 laps, the first is a 1/2 mile loop around the inside of the athletic fields, then laps 2 and 3 take a long, diagonal shot at the hill and circle the school up top before dropping down a long, gradual downhill that levels off just before you hit the street. This is where we do our 3/4 mile hill workouts, and I absolutely love the course.
It was about 30 degrees at the start and I was foolish enough to think I'd be fine in a singlet. I wanted to run sub-15, figured anything under 15:30 would be good considering the recent lapse in training. I got out fast, 72 for the first quarter, felt good, then 2:32 for 1/2 mile, the cold really settling into my chest and legs. I pushed the hill hard but couldn't accelerate at the top of the hill and came through the mile in 5:15. At first I thought my lack of zip was due to a lapse in fitness, but I managed to maintain that pace for the rest of the race. I was alone after 1/4 mile, so it was more of a time trial than anything.
Hit 2 miles at the top of the second hill in 10:35 (5:20), then ran the final downhill mile in 5:12 for a 15:47 final time. A little disappointed with the time, but it's considerably faster than I ran it in high school (16:49 when it was a 5k as a senior). My legs and arms were frozen, and I blame the slower pace on that -- I really felt good otherwise.
In the team race we got thrashed by North Central (US #18 at the time, moved up to #8 afterwards). The score was something like 68-131. Our sophomore ran 15:16, our #2 hit 15:27 (just got done taking the SATs and had the flu last week), #3 15:59 (huge improvement for out other sophomore), the others struggled a bit. Our usual #3 ran terrible for him -- he also took the SAT today and just seemed to be fried. He ran fine later the next week, but on this day, he looked bad. Good things still happening... we have yet to run as we are capable. | 