This year’s Run 4 Kerri was all about the great
weather. Too bad I am not in great shape
and had too much fun at Foolproof’s Augtoberfest the night before the race to
have taken full advantage of it.
I woke up the morning of the race feeling like hell, a
headache, no desire to get out of bed, just felt beat overall. I finally rolled out of bed and into the
shower, hoping this would get me out of my haze a bit…
I finally stumbled out of the shower and proceeded to brush
the beer taste out of my mouth and get my things together. My shoes were drenched from sweat from the
prior days 13+ miler, which was supposed to be 10…so I just threw my racing
shoes in my bag and used those for the warm up, race and cool down. There was a stop at the gas station for gas
and Gatorade and then off to Matunuck Elementary School.
It was an amazing day…it was cool, it was not humid and the
sky was beautiful. Soon after arriving I
grabbed my bib # and threw on my running shoes and soon after that a group of 7
or 8 of us went out for a warm-up.
The race…
Zak and I had talked about started relatively easy and
trying to pick it up. This sounded
great, because I was not in any shape to go out hard; having someone that I
have raced with and run 1000’s of miles with would also make the race easier...
Yadda yadda…the race starts and Zak, Kaela O’Neil, Dan
Hawkins and myself became a group pretty quick.
I believe there may have been a couple others early, but I don’t
recall. Through the first ½ mile or so,
I felt pretty good, but unless you go out like a complete asshole, there is no
reason you should feel bad a half mile into a 4 mile race. We had thought around 5:50 pace would be a
good start and we went through around 5:43, so a tad quicker, but not too fast. The next mile went by pretty smooth as
well. We were all still together and we
were catching up to some people that may have started out a bit too quick….like
they always do. We hit the 2nd
mile in 5:40. The next mile is the
toughest on the course in my opinion.
There is no huge hill or crazy headwind, it is just the 3rd
mile of a 4 mile race and you are on a straight road for about half of it, where
I tend to fall asleep and then you turn into a twisty neighborhood then finish
the 3rd mile with the only hill on the course. So, with all that said, I made a conscious effort
yo try and push on the long straight stretch.
When I did this the pack broke up a bit, I am not sure if I just pulled
away or what, but I started reeling in a dude in blue and I saw Dave not too
far ahead. I caught blue man at around
2.5 and started the twisty neighborhood section…got up the goddamn hill,
hitting 3 in 5:49 and tried to get my legs back after cresting. I was doing my best to try and get closer to
Dave, but after 3.5 I don’t believe I got any closer, but it kept me going for
sure. With around 0.4 to go, you take
one last 90 degree right hand turn, when I took that turn I could see that Zak
wasn’t too far back, so the motivation to keep the pedal on the gas just went
up a notch, I am not going to catch Dave, but I sure in hell did not want to
get caught by Zak! The last bit of the
course is a slight up, a slight down and then about 200 meters on the driveway
to the school. I kicked hard and was
able to get under 23 mins, with a 22:56.
Not too bad the way I was feeling that day! I ran faster than Arnold Mills, but had way
better weather. Hopefully a decent
performance will get me going.
A big group of us did the course again for a cool down, I
bonked pretty hard. I just wanted Gatorade
and food. Awards happened reasonably quick
considering the timing companies issues….and off to Mew’s we went for lunch…14
of us in fact! All in all it was a good
race and I even picked up a prize! Haha.
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