Well I took my time getting to the Riverwoods this morning because it was a Curt race and I knew the first bus wouldn't leave when it said it would. Butted in line with Michelle and Josse to get our numbers. On the way up our bus stopped at Timp park so people could use the bathroom, I had already went. I was annoyed by the stop and just wanted to get to the start .The bus ride took forever and it was freezing at the starting line. I did a 2 mile warm up, mostly with Josse and Michelle. I wasn't in race mode since I hadn't done one in so long. I figured I would just hang back on the first couple of miles and see what was going on and how I felt. No pressure for this race. There were a couple of people that took off pretty fast, including Michelle, but I wasn't worried. I was mostly using this run to estimate my fitness and to get a good workout for WBR. I hung around two guys in the lead pack for the first 3 miles. Those are the fastest miles of the race where you can really cook if you want to. I wanted to hang back though, so I did. At Vivian park I could tell that my competition was wavering and stayed right on there butts until mile 4, then took the lead over. From there to the finish was like a long tempo run and I just watched the lead bikers speed up and slow down in front of while we all dodged the mass amounts of people on the trail. One of the lead bikers took a spill around mile seven, I don't think he got hurt, but it was rather funny! He looked back to see where I was, after they had been dinking around, and I surprised him being so close and he pulled his handle bars in the same direction as his head and went down. Other than that it was, me, myself, and I out on a tempo run. At times I got a little lazy in my pace but still averaged 5:40s for the run. Not bad for crappy training and no racing, I felt great the whole time! Here are the splits for all you split fanatics out there. 1- 5:34 Just hanging around and enjoying the ease of this mile
2- 5:34 The guy from Cali leading would surge everytime me and the other guy caught him, rather annoying
3- 5:34 (how is that for consistency!) Slow for those first three miles, but I wasn't worried about the first three miles.
4- 5:43 Took over the lead eventhough I really didn't want to yet.
5- 5:45 Just trying to relax and enjoy myself, but wondered who was coming behind me still.
6- 5:35 Feeling good. Asked for water at aid station and ended up throwing Gatorade down the front of me. 7- 5:43 Feeling lazy, got a good chuckle out of the biker going down.
8- 5:47 Still being lazy and a little uphill, got more bugs in the eyes than anything!
9- 5:47 Put in it cruise control for good, couldn't see anyone coming up on me. Dodged a lot of people. 3rd mile in a row with super bad tangents!
10- 5:36 Smelling the barn but no need to push. It was fun to win one to start my season off on a good note. Thanks everyone else for running different races this weekend so I could have a fun race all by myself! I did a 3 mile cool down, some with Kent, Michelle, and Josse, all of who ran great races. People didn't believe me that my training has been weak lately, maybe they will look at the blog and see for themselves. I plan on getting it going now.
Side note on my time. When I came across the line the timers yelled out my time 56:42, I caught 56:43, being a bit slow to stop my watch. On the results they put 57:02 or something like that. I went to see what had happed to my time because 56 sounds better than 57. They couldn't figure it out and kept saying that they wouldn't have missed me since I was the first runner. Turns out they had a little girl pushing the space bar and she didn't do it when I came across, so they pushed it late and never went back to fix my time when they printed the results. I don't think they knew my time and didn't bother asking. I told them to fix it if they remembered so Sasha could better critique my run!:) Sasha could fix it anyway if it really mattered. 61 miles this week, (that is more like it), three workouts, and a race win made for a good week. Next week my goals are similar as far as mileage. WBR should be a lot of fun! (Omni- 483 miles) (Fastwitch -77 miles)
| 