AM: 16.5 miles total.
I had thought about this race last year but didn't pull the trigger on it. A strange, but actually useful distance as for someone of my current fitness it gives me a decent sense of my untapered 1-hour effort and maybe tapered in 3 weeks run about the same or a little faster for a half. I was hoping to run faster, but this probably makes sense I guess. I race decently, but just don't have that extra push in me either anymore or because I need to learn how to race again.
The course is fairly flat and at Indian Springs Metro Park. I warmed up 3.5 miles, did about a half mile at moderate to marathon effort and a few strides. Race was fairly uneventful. Things settled out and around 1.5 miles the 5kers turned around, so I had a decent sense of how many were ahead of me, but some guy gave me my placing two different times, which was nice. Ran behind a guy who had just stopped to tie his shoe and eventually passed him around the halfway mark. Ran alone for a good bit until I saw another guy with about 2.5 miles to go. I worked to catch him, not thinking I could but also not doing a good job of using race tactics to figure it out (a simple count from a stationary point would have done it). I caught him and passed him on the hill as we weaved a little bit around some 5k folks. I passed him just before the top of the hill, where I should have pressed a bit more to definitively drop him. Still I put about 13-15 seconds on him in the last 90 seconds to 2 minutes. 5th place was almost 3 minutes ahead. The winner ran around 43 minutes, which surprised me.
3.5 up/5 down
Splits: 6:31, 6:35, 6:43, 6:41, 6:36, 6:32, 6:38, 6:42
Average HR was 170, so maybe a touch low, but not much pop to start. Most of it was right around half marathon effort to maybe a touch firmer given that it was solidly in the 60s and very humid.
| 