I probably had the best race event of my very short running
career. Somehow or another I managed to eat right the day before, rest enough, fuel myself in the AM, not drink too much fluids before hand, not start out too fast, manage my fuel and fluid intake during the race, and had enough juice to finish
strong. The net result is that I
averaged an 8:39m/m pace, well under my 8:59m/m goal. And the bonus is that I had a lot of fun
doing it. Best of all, I had a great "event test" run with my new Newton's and I am pleased that they didn't let me down!
Up through around mile 4 I can claim all of the credit, but
then I managed to hook up with some good company that was compatible with the
pace that I wanted to set, we had good conversation, and we able to encourage
ourselves to a strong finish. I’m not
sure that I would have run as strong as I did without them. It was a lot of fun
and it felt really good to run with them.
My goal had been to do my first mile at somewhere around a
9:30 pace, which I did, then steadily but slowly improve on that as I felt
stronger, start running harder after mile 8, with hopefully a nice kick during
the last mile. And things turned out pretty much according to plan:
Mile 8: 8:46
Mile 9: 7:46
Mile 10: 7:45
Mile 11: 8:03 (ran into some traffic)
Mile 12: 7:38
Last 4/10 of a mile: 7:59 pace
Somewhere around mile 4 I connected with “Sarah”, a
40-something woman who it turns out is a very accomplished runner, having
already run the MCM twice. We seemed to
share the same goals for the event so it was easy to run with her. Then around mile 7 I became aware of 2 guys
that were drafting us and at first I started asking them if we were holding
them back, but they insisted that it was more like we were pulling them along
and we were doing fine setting the
pace. As soon as we finished mile 8 I
started kicking it up a bit, helped somewhat by the slight downhill that we had and as soon as we finished that mile I
was almost afraid to let my companions know that we just did a 7:46 split. But
they were cool with it and ok to continue at that pace, and so we did. By the time we got to
mile 12 with 4/10 of a mile to go, I wanted to see if I could push to the
finish, and everyone started humping it up a bit more.
Sarah’s young son had joined us around mile 11.5 told us that we
had this little bridge go over, then a 90 degree turn to the finish. But unbeknownst to me, as soon as we turned
that corner we had a bit of a hill… Ok,
it was not much of a hill, but I was pretty close to running out of gas and
dealing with a hill was not something that I was looking forward to. As soon as we hit that corner, one of the
guys that I was sprinting with at time just took off on me. It’s like he fired a new engine and just took
off up that hill. I started to take off
after him, thinking that yeah it would be fun to finish with him, but as I
started to amp it up, discretion took over – I wanted to finish the
race…. not fall flat short of the finish line, or worse yet, hurt myself. So I finished, strong, albeit not as strong
as he did – but hey, I can play the “age” card; I probably have 10 years on
that guy.
My right Achilles was somewhat tight the rest of the day and
today (the day after), so I’ve been icing it after walking Reece (my dog), and
wrapping it from time to time for support and warmth. No stretching or serious exertion. The running group (Potomac River Running, a
group that I’ve gotten to know) invited me to join them on Tuesday afternoon for
a group run, but I’m not sure that I should.
We’ll see come Tuesday PM. I want
to do 16 miles this weekend, so I need my feet, ankles, calves, Achilles,hams,
quads, etc., to all be in good shape!
I do want to send a shout out to the Potomac River Running (website: www.prraces.com) group that organized this
event. I haven’t run that many
events, but the Leesburg 20K was one that I thought was one of the best managed
events that I have participated in. The
sign-in at 6:00AM was seemless, plenty of porta johns, a well organized start, a nicely marshaled
route, lots of hydration, and a well managed finish line. Best of all, I had a great time (both
figuratively and literally).
69 more days to the MCM !!!
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