I was planning to take some time off from any races or any faster running period for a little while but another race that I hadn't planned on came up here in town. Our high school wrestling team put this race on as a fundraiser. We don't have many races here in town so I hate not to support them. My sons friend, that lives just up the street from us, always sees me running and wanted me to come, and then their add in the newspaper for the race, challenged all to come out and see if you could beat their wrestlers then it said "we don't think you can." I know the coach has his wrestlers do a lot of running in practice and a few of them run cross country but how can you pass up that challenge.I really didn't want to run the race at first but decided what the heck and figured I could just make it a good tempo workout. The paved roads have been clear of ice and snow for the past couple of weeks but last night it started snowing. It only snowed a couple of inches but it was cold enough that it all stuck and formed a nice slick snow packed surface after the traffic from last night and this morning. It was 11 degrees this morning at home but got up to about 16 by race time and there was a brisk north wind blowing. This would live up to it's name and be a true polar run. I warmed up for 2 miles and it was very slick. I put some screws in the bottom of my shoes again but on this type of snow they didn't seem to help as much on the snow as it did on the ice at the race two weeks ago. The training runs that I do in these conditions usually end up at around 1 min per mile slow for the effort so I knew my time would be completely irrelevant. The race started and about 6 kids went out pretty fast ahead of me. There were about 40 runners all together. About 1/2 mile in I passed 2 boys running together in gray hoodies. The road goes down a big hill into what is called creamery hollow then a steep climb up the other side. You really didn't dare run very fast down the steep hill with it so slick [the kid in front of me came real close to going down] and going up the steep other side with poor footing was tough. The 2 in hoodies went right by me going up the hill but I just kept it easy. Shortly after topping out I went right back by the 2 and could really hear them sucking wind. The first mile ended just as the climb began and my time was 6:51. A big stretch of mile 2 after climbing the hill, went directly north into the headwind. I picked off 2 more of the kids by the end of mile 2 and finished in 7:31. The 2 kids running ahead of me were about 20 seconds up which is about where they had been since the first 1/4 mile of the race. At the beginning of mile 3 we turned onto a main road that had been plowed and actually had pavement showing. It only lasted about 1/3 mile and my pace quickly dropped into the low 6s with that raction. That was the only part of the race that wasn't on snow. We went back through the steep hollow [not quite as bad in this spot] then turned back into the headwind. Part way through this mile one of the 2 ahead of me started to drop back and I picked him off but the gap to the kid ahead stayed about the same. Mile 3 was 7:09. Now we were done with the headwind and it was flat all the way back to the school. I finished mile 4 in 7:03 and the gap ahead was about the same but the gap behind had grown a lot. The final mile I started to pick up the pace and the gap was getting smaller. It was really hard to go much faster with the poor footing and I was running out of course. When I could see I wasn't going to catch him I just cruised it in without bothering to attempt a kick. I ended up about 12 seconds back. My time for the last mile was 5:25 but it was .19 short according to my Garmin so 6:49 pace. Time was 33:49. Third place was about a minute after me. It was actually pretty fun and I'm glad I went. It was kind of fun not caring about my time and just racing against the others. I really didn't race all out [although my HR was close to what it was in my last 5k] but running on that surface must really use some different muscles. My butt [glutes] were really cramping up afterward which has never happened after a race. I guess I'll take it easy starting "NOW!" Afterward my brother and his family and my parents came up from Utah and we all went out hiking through the knee deep snow in the mountains to cut Christmas trees. It ended up being a sunny nice day.
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