AM: Run for the Hill of It 5 Miler. Not a good time for me, but it was a decent effort. I feel like I am going to be stuck in ~6:00 minute purgatory for the rest of my running career. My legs were fairly tired today, so maybe I accomplished my goal (get a hard effort on mileage loaded legs); I don't know.
Megan wanted to run, so we walked a bit so she wouldn't have to warm up too far and then ran (~1.3). Picked up my packet and continued to warm up for 3.25 with a half mile at marathon pace. Felt sluggish as I knew I would. Did a few strides just to loosen up. Race didn't start on time (they never do). I shut my Garmin off and didn't bring my Timex, so this was my first blind race, which is I guess how they use to do it in the days of chest hair and mustaches. I think I ran the appropriate effort.
Some faster young dudes took the pace out conservatively and strung it out after mile 1 as I knew they would. I stayed on the single file train and ran with a guy, traded places into the turn around. 13 minutes?! I'm having a great day! Nope, the clock is very off (I had to do the math after the race and that would be very very fast for me). I got by him around mile 3-3.5 and worked on the next guy and we traded places before he got back ahead of me and I wasn't able to outkick him. Just before the finish line we got a 29-and-change update and a "pick it up for sub-30." I almost died. I thought I was at least running in the 5:50s, but hopefully faster. I should have beat the guy in front of me, but was too pouty about my time.
1st half = 14:45 (5:54 pace) 2nd half = 15:21 (6:09 pace). Guess I died more than I thought. No one ahead of me ran a negative split, but one was a very close positive split.
Waited for Megan who ran 40:46 with a 47 second negative split. She asked if I was going to run it in with her which I did for a little while until I told her to beat the young woman in front of her by taking the tangent right of the edge of the fence post and straight to the finish. I let her go and she finished nice and strong.
It was pouring at the end of the race and a bit before. I pouted for a while, then we walked about 1.5 miles with Megan and then we ran a mile home (a good day for her). I got the idea to do some hard 400s as we were climing the College Hill, so I did another 1.25 to the track after dropping off my mud spattered singlet. Did the 400s then 1.25 home.
4 x 400 w/ ~85 seconds rest averaged 76.1
Those burned a bit, but I did have a decent amount of time from the race until I did the workout (legs were obviously pretty tired).
PM: Likely off. Don't need the mileage even though a typical PM, post-race shakeout would put me at 90 for the week.
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