Paul predicted that this race would help me get moving in the right direction again. I had pretty low expectations going into this race as I've been battling one cold after another for the last six weeks or so. That coupled with very little training over the winter (I averaged well under 20 miles a week from November on and hadn't run more than six miles at a time since then), didn't give me much hope for a good time.
We met Carrie and Kiya on the bus ride up and had a nice visit with them and met Nathan, Wayne and Larry as we were standing around trying to stay warm at the start. My strategy was to hang back at the start and see how I was feeling and then push it harder at the end if I was feeling OK. I wasn't expecting much as it was a struggle to run a 9:15 pace earlier in the week.
With the nice downhill start I started out at a comfortable pace and then picked it up a bit as I still felt good after a half mile or so. I was surprised to find that I'd run the first mile in 6:42 and wasn't even breathing hard. At a mile and a half there was about a 100 feet of elevation gain to the two mile marker and my pace slowed to 7:44. With the rolling net downhill of the next mile I dropped to 7:32 before my lack of training started to really catch up to me. I slogged through the next miles with splits of 8:01, 8:34 and 8:33. I still had enough juice at the end however to drop below seven minute pace for the last quarter mile.
The weather, course and people at the race were just fantastic. We just had a great weekend. For the first race since the marathon I was happy to find that my legs could still move at 6:30 pace at times and that I still had a little strength and endurance left over. I was really happy that I wasn't bothered with the PF in my right foot either during the race or afterwards. I'm now looking forward to starting to build up mileage again.
Congratulations to Paul, Nathan, Kiya and the others on their trophies and to Carrie on a new PR! | 