Quest For Boston

10.3 at 8:36

LSD today. Not as far as I would have liked but I had a work appt. at 9:00.  Ran with Dave and a couple of new guys in the neighborhood.  It went by fast and I felt good. It's getting close to thinking about Boston time. Time to find myself a training program.

Easy recovery run today.

Early morning as I had to put the turkey in the oven befor running out the door for the race.  Cold and windy conditions. Temp was 33 with 20 mph winds.  I wasn't feeling my best as I fell asleep on the couch and spent the night twisted up like a pretzel.  Add the fact that I'm dealing with some sort of bronchille issue and it was a recipe for a poor performance.

     Only did a mile warm up as I was running late to the start.  By the end of it I was going through my normal hacking up a lung ritual.  Luckily it tends to last only long enough to bring up the nasty's and then I'm fine again until I lie down.

     There were a surprising number of good runners who showed up this morning.  I usualy finish in the top 5 with no worry but I could tell right away that the top 10 would be quick.  Having left my Garmin home I have no idea what my splits were.  I thought today would be a good day to run sans watch as my times have been consistent to the point of scary. I'm just starting to wonder if I run too much by the clock and not enough by my training and how I feel.  Last month I ran a hillier cousre in 18:42 by myself in practise so you would think a real race would be a bit quicker.  18:38 is a bit quicker but not by much. 

     I went out hard for the firstmile as I didn't want to lose contact with the leaders.  Sadly my legs just wouldn't respond after that.  I used the hill at mile2 to star making a move on the three runners in front of me and managed to close the gap from about 200 yards to 50 but then course went into a tight turn and I tweeked my hammy a bit.rounding the corner.  It forced me to hld back on the down hill leading into the finish.  It was sad to watch the 3 men in front of me pull away but it's just a turkey day 5k.  No need to get hurt. I suppose if I had realy wanted 2nd I wouldn't have yelled at them as they started taking a wrong turn at the bottom of the hill.

     I'm pretty happy with my effort but a little frustrated with my lack of speed.  The legs just don't want to turn over any quicker.  I guess I'll have to do some more core work and hit the track if I realy want to improve.

6 miles today at 7:56.  Started out slowly and picked it up as I went along.  My legs felt surprisingly good after yesterdays race. X-country 5k tommorrow.

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. :)