Murray Fun Days 5 K. 16:39, 3rd place after my teammates Corbin Talley (16:22) and Mike Nieslen (15:36). In the absense of a number of fast runners, we pulled off a 1-2-3 for the Wasatch Running Center, which made Glen (the store owner) very happy. The course is not the fastest by any means - 1% grade up for about 1.1 miles, then 180 turn, and the same grade down on the way back. From there somewhat of a rolling hills around the Murray City Park to the finish. The start was rather abnormal. Corbin pulled off a manuever I considered doing myself but thought would be logistically impossible - two races in the same day, finishing 3rd in Sandy Classic 10 K 15 minutes earlier with 33:56. I did not ask him how fast he had to drive, but in my earlier discussions with other runners the consensus was you had to be on a police motorcycle to make it. So with another race under his belt already Corbin was not anxious to push the pace. Mike was not in a hurry to do so either. At first we were moving so slow that I considered taking the initiative to push the pace, but feeling a bit of a headwind made me change my mind. About 0.7 into the race Mike finally started going, and I tried to go with him. He dropped me fairly quickly hitting the mile in 5:09. I got 5:16, and was very happy with it, especially considering the grade and the fact it did not feel too hard. I though the second mile would be easily 5:10 going downhill. It was not - only 5:20. By that time Corbin had started to recover from his earlier race and caught me. I tried to hang on, and made it to a little bit past the 2 mile mark. After that, I was just praying I would not get passed (with the prize money cut-off being top 3), and trying my hardest to discourage the possible predators. Fortunately, the venomous predators were not around, and I managed to stay in 3rd place. Third mile was 5:30, and the kick was 33 seconds. It was actually 32, but USATF rules say you always need to round off the finish time up to the nearest second, so 16:38.01 rounds off to 16:39. On the last mile, as usual, I felt I could go a while at that pace, but lacked the juice to go even 5 seconds per mile faster. I ran 15 seconds slower than I did last year, but I knew I should not expect much after my three-week mileage/tempo experiment. Losing only 15 seconds in a 5 K immediately after the hard and possibly unwise training is probably not that bad. Especially if you get $50 and good circuit points for it. So in spite of a slow time, I am very happy with this race. In the evening ran with the kids, and worked out with weights (bench-press). One set of 6 with 85, then another set of 6 with 90, and then a set of 3 with 100. On the last repetition I barely was able to get the barbell on the stand. This is a sigficant improvement from Saturday. Could your muscles possibly get stronger after one workout? Or possibly the fatigue of running and the general stress of life was higher on Saturday that tonight? | 