The streak is over. I've finished this race in 4th place for the first five years of it's existence but this year slipped to 5th. The high school kids are getting faster. :) I love this race as it takes place over the local high schools x-country course. As a former XC runner back in the day it's nice to get off the roads. I wish I lived off island sometimes so I could do a few trail races.
The ankle felt a little fragile to start this run. Tendonitis sucks. Luckily it felt better as the race progressed. I started out slower than on Thursday for two reasons. One; the start of this race can get scary with all the young kids sprinting to the front for the photo op. Two; I really wanted to see how I was feeling after racing 2 days ago. This combo of races is a yearly tradition and after last years 19:42 I wanted to run a smarter race.
After starting out in about 12th place I settled in to a pace that didn't feel too fast and focused on the person in front of me. By the end of the first mile I had moved up into about 10th place and started to pick up the pace. I could see that there was a small group of high school kids about 80 yards up on me so I tried to reel them in. Didn't quite work out as the lead group continued to pull away but a stragler would drop off the pack and I would slowly reel them in. With about 1/2 a mile to go I found myself in7th place with 2 runners working together to try to hold me off. As I moved up along side them, one of the guys fell back off the pace while the other pulled ahead. I bided my time and stayed on his heels until just before a big clearing when I went by him at a full sprint. I held it for about 30 seconds and took a peek over my shoulder as the course took a hairpin turn and saw that he was 40 yards in the rearview mirror. Styed relaxed and finished strong over the final 200 yards to take 5th place.
I managed to run a PR for this course today without feeling like I had run as fast as I could have. Plus it was a lot of fun to run a race with strategy for a change. This race officialy marks the end of racing season so it's all about packing on the miles until the Boston Prep 16miler at the end of January. I'm starting to get excited. :)
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