I didn't have high hopes for this race after how poorly I ran last Saturday. The goal was similar to Saturday, just run hard and pick up some circuit points.
Showed up 45 minutes early, warmed up 2 miles with Ken Richardson and Albert Wint.
The course was mostly run on State Street in Murray. The first mile is uphill then you turn around and come back down and the third mile is uphill for the first half and downhill for the second half.
I knew it would be a competitive race. Teren Jameson, Jamal Tongo, Nate Hornock, Ken Richardson, and Albert Wint are all very good runners. The race started and Teren, Ken, Jamal, and two high schoolers got out very quickly. I settled into 6th place and ran the first mile in 5:13. I passed the two high schoolers right around the mile mark. Ken, Jamal, and Teren were like 4:50 for that first mile (uphill!). Nate caught up to me just at the turnaround and we ran the next half mile mostly together. Nate gapped me by about 4 seconds at 1.5 miles. Up ahead I could see Teren pulling away, Jamal in second, and Ken somewhat coming back to us. The second mile was 5:01.
Nate got up to maybe 7 seconds on me by 2.5 miles. Ken was about 15 seconds up. We approached a sharp right turn and Ken glanced back and saw Nate and I were closing and he threw in a surge to keep his lead. At 2.9 I had closed on Nate and the gap was 4-5 seconds. I decided it was time to go to the closet, find my old wheels from my days running the mile, dust them off, and see if they still worked! I started kicking hard (somewhere in here I hit mile 3 but was too busy kicking to see my pace, later I found out it was 5:04) Nate turned back and saw me after the crowd got louder and he started sprinting. I found yet another gear and went into 100 meter all out sprint. I ended up getting him by 3-4 seconds for 4th place. My last .15 was 34 seconds or 3:44 mile pace! I figure my last 400 was sub-60.
Total time was 15:54 (though I had 15:52 and it was hand timed so who's to say who was more accurate) for 3.15 miles (at least according to my garmin).
So the race went alot better than I expected after how poorly Saturday went. What a difference just two days of running makes! The best news of the day was my knee didn't bother me at all!
3.35 mile cooldown with Ken. Teren and Nate joined us for part of it as well.
Got home and did my 10.5 minute ab workout. |