2017 Lil Rhody Runaround

The last 3 weeks I have been trying to gain some fitness and get back in a groove. I have slowly been adding miles and am right around that 50 mile per week mark. I think I am starting to feel more fit, I have been able to end runs in the low to mid 6 min pace range without much trouble. Now I just need to up the mileage and start getting in some actual work outs. I feel for now, the upbeat training day, the progression run, do the trick.

Racing when unfit is always a challenge, but when there are races you like to run and you have the motivation to race, you say what the hell…so that’s what I did this weekend.

This would be my 8th Li’l Rhody Runaround. I knew it wouldn’t be my fastest or my slowest but I thought I could be somewhere near that 50 min mark.

2002-1:02:52 - 84th
2008-50:39 - 6th
2009-49:30 - 9th
2010-49:03 - 5th
2013-49:29 - 8th
2014-47:41 – 8th
2015-50:24 – 11th

I of course had to slightly sabotage my race and ending up having a bit too much fun on Saturday day/night. Drinking more than I should have and getting to bed later than I would have liked. This made for a groggy start to the AM on Sunday. I woke up thinking, yah, no…I am just going to run this one easy and have fun out there,

Luckily the race has a later start; I still felt a bit off on the warm up, but good enough to give it a go. My plan was to start out more conservative than previous years. This race always goes out stupid fast and I did not want to get sucked into that, it would only hurt me later.

So, mission accomplished there. OI went out in around 5:51 vs the usual sub 5:40. I felt pretty OK. Legs felt stiff and beat as if I have never raced before and my stomach felt like shit from all the beer and the late night grilled cheese and tater tots, otherwise, I felt like pure gold!

I fell in line with the usual suspects, Jonny, Muddy, Tommy 5k. There were some younger Westerly HS kids again which ended up being great bait when they were fading late in the race, Brightman went out hard per usual, but faded and got caught by Jonny. Muddy stayed close to me and I caught he last Westerly guy at the road and pulled away in the last mile. The 3 of us were pretty close. I finished in 50:13 in 5th place, not great, but not horrible on the slow day. Eric was slower than my 8th place time from 2014 and he is much faster than I am.

After the race, it got cold again. It was a weird weather day. We headed over to Jonny’s house after the awards for a bit. Would have loved to have stayed longer, but Saturday was catching up to me and I just wanted to go sit on the couch and watch TV.

Next up…CYCLOCROSS!!!

Check out Matt Walker's video of the race!