Morning: 3 mile warm-up around Camp Randal, then hopped a bus to the start. This was my 2nd attempt at the race and I did much better this time around. Last year I ran 29:21 on what I would call a perfect weather day. Today I ran 26:56 on a terrible weather day! Winds were 15-20 mph with gusts of 30 and light to hard rain at times. This is a neat race because it has a lot of down hill, but also has some really steep climbs. The coolest part is the finish into Camp Randal Stadium where the Big 10 Badgers play football. The small down hill finish really helped me finish hard today. I signed up for the race on Sunday and submitted my time from Bank of America, but apparently they weren't able to verify or didn't have the time? I wound up with a terrible corral assignment. So right before the start I sneaked into the elite corral to ensure I wouldn't be walking with the walkers. At the start all the UW-Badger football players, hockey players, and cheer leaders were there to greet and send us off. Wow, those football players are huge! The race got off to a fast start, but not as fast the Bank of America 8K I ran in March, so I settled into about 10th place and sucked off everyone else. I split a 5:04 for the 1st mile, which was way too fast. Most of the 1st mile is down hill with some small uphill sections so maybe it was a 5:10-5:15 effort? I was hoping to average 5:20's today, which I thought was a reasonable goal for the conditions. Probably not an ideal start though. I was able to recover fairly well from the early fast pace, running a 5:21 for the 2nd mile, which has a really long steep hill that contains a few 90 degree turns in it. Miles 3-5 I was bucking the wind off the lake. It wasn't terrible, but hit us at a tough point in the race. I managed to split another 5:20 because I recognized another runner from Fort I've never raced against because he had a singlet that said Vos Sentury out of Fort. I had learned he was a pretty good college runner and I think he's around 22-25 years of age. I pulled up along side Voss and ran shoulder to shoulder with him for a short time before he would eventually surge and begin to pull away. This mentally hurt me and I dropped a 5:35 mile. I'm still mad at myself for this mile because I think I would have had a chance to beat Voss if I had upped my effort to 95% for a short while. Mile 5 I would rebound to a comfortable 5:29 pace if there is such a thing in an 8K race. I should have pushed this mile a little harder, but I didn't really mentally have it in me. I came to life in the last 600 meter or so though! I blew past 3 runners with an excellent kick, probably my best to date. My pace for the final part of the race shows a 3:50 mile pace. This was a solid race for me coming off a major marathon blow-up! So I'm really happy about running this race because I feel like I can move forward now with some confidence in my training plans. I'm excited about the next 7 weeks of training now that I'm healthy and in good spirits. A few of my local running friends came to watch my race. They stood in the rain just to see me run, that was cool. I also talked with Voss and exchanged emails, so maybe now I have someone around my abilities to actually train with? It sure would be nice to have a training partner for some of the hard intervals and long runs. I finished with an 8.38 mile cooldown in 7:39 pace feeling pretty good, so I'll probably put some more miles in later today. Evening: 4.25 miles
| 