I drove up last night for the Bloomsday race in Spokane. I did this a few years ago and loved the experience and thought I could improve on the previous result. My girlfriend and I met up with some friends at Hu Hot (one of my all-time favorite restaurants) and then headed up into the woods to camp. We had just gotten camp set up when a pack of wolves began howling some distance away. Spooky. And they were definitely wolves, I've grown up around coyotes all my life -- these howls were too low-pitched and drawn out for coyotes. No yipping. I knew there were packs moving into Washington, but I had no idea they had moved in so close to Spokane. Anyway, the race went very badly. I made a huge mistake in my training, and because of poor planning and a rushed schedule I didn't get a run in on Friday or Saturday. I wasn't planning to peak for this race, so my workload was significant between the Tuesday and Thursday workouts. I think I really needed some easy runs those two days to get some blood through the legs and help them recover, because they felt awful on the course today. I got out fine in 5:08, but I was straining right from the gun. The 2nd mile has a long downhill and finishes on a shorter uphill, and I only managed 5:17, then 5:22 for an uphill mile 3. 16:00 at 3. After that I was toast. I ran mile 4 in 5:40, almost 6:00 on mile 5 up the Doomsday hill, and then I didn't pay attention to splits and just focused on finishing. Once again, my breathing felt totally fine, but my legs were just dead, and the hills took whatever else I had left in them. I'm fairly certain that was due to not running the last 2 days.
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