Well a so so race today. Not a bummer but not a Thriller either. If you would have told me last night that I'd run a 1:13:19 and run a faster race today than last year I would have taken it. But now after the fact I feel like I left a little or lost a little out there. Oh well. A solid workout and start to the year. Because the course was different (more hilly) than last year I had no time goal. I also had no place goal. So what goals did I have... to just run a solid race and be able to feel like it was faster than last year. Mission accomplished...So that's good. Started out strong and through mile 3 we (Dave an I) were still only 10-15 seconds back from Fritz. As we finished off mile 4 I started to feel labored as we started climbing. My wife shuttled around the course and saw me 3-4 times during the race and she said I looked labored and not my usual smoother stride. About there Dave started to gap me and by mile 5 BJ caught me and gaped me too. Oh well just run your own race. My wife gave me a drink at like 6.6 and I took one drink and it went down. On the second drink I barfed everything back out. Now I only had one more drink in the bottle and I needed the entire thing to push me through the race. To that point I ran the hills as good or better than planned. Then at roughly the 8th mile my left quad flexed tight and never loosened up. It was like rock solid. I did ok through 9-11 and my goal the entire race was to really pound from 11 to the finish. Because that was the fastest and most runnable part of the course. Sadly I slowed down on the finishing miles and couldn't muster anything faster than 5:45 pace. Got passed by Steve Summsion at around 11.6 and made no effort to go with him. Quad was so tight and I was basically finished racing. Just finished it off in a pathetic fashion and it bothers me. AND last year when I finished I felt great ( like I could have flipped it and ran another half at around equal effort). But today I was done! Guess I need some more tempo and interval type training... Ugh! I hate em'.
So my regret of the race is not being able to finish strong. Even if I do a little better on the last 2 miles I don't get passed by Steve and I close the gap on Dave. But it just wouldn't happen. My quads have become a big problem. My calves don't get tight or sore anymore but my quads just die. At UV they were the death of me -crashing harder than ever before. Need to find away to fix that problem... sooner than later. Shout out to Fritz for running a super sub 1:10 time and a much harder course than last year. And to Dave for hitting a 1:12:30 or so. Good job! Oh yeah it was 39 F when I left the house and lots of rain. So warmer than it has been but very wet. However course conditions weren't too bad. The rain kind of died off for most of the run with just a little wind on the last 3 miles. After the race it started raining hard again. 4.6 mile warm up with Dave and Dustin. 2 mile cool down
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