It has been over a year since I have done a blog post. Not much in the way of racing happened
in 2016, it was just a year laced with a lack of motivation. I raced a bit in the early months, but
then didn’t race in about 4 months leading up to the Newport ‘Almost’ 10k.
Since the Newport ‘Almost’ 10k, I have raced 3 more
times. Here is a re-cap of 2 of those races and Newport. I also did the Krispy Kreme Challenge this past weekend for the 3rd year in a row, but will re-cap that later!
This feels like many moons ago. This was my 15th time running this race. I remember not being overly pumped up
about racing, but when I saw some WTAC guys in the lot; I knew I had to be
ready to rumble. There were a few
Turtles running…and with Bronson and Dave running, I knew we would be good to
go for the team title. There were
other notable runners besides the WTACers.last year’s winner, who passed me at
5.5 miles for that win and also Steve Brightman.
The race couldn’t have played out much better for the shape
I was in at the time. We had a
huge pack through around 3 miles.
At that point Bronson and I made a small gap. I was able to hang on to him until almost 4, but then as
expected he pulled away. Shortly
after that Dave caught up and went right by me. I gave it a solid go to stay with him, but I just could not
hang. I could tell last year’s
winner was now catching me and he did right before 5.5…can we say deja vu. He ended up passing me and catching and
passing Dave at the 6 mile mark. I
finished strong enough in a time of 34:24, faster than the 2015 time of 34:40. I was definitely happy with the
performance, as I did not feel like I was in that kinda shape at all.
On a whim I decided to give this race a go, even though I
had a race the next day. I have
seen this race listed for the last couple of years, but I always tend to notice
right before race day and never go.
It is billed as a snowshoe race, but with no snow to speak of, it was a
night trail race instead. Past
results show it is a pretty small low-key race, which is what I was looking
for. Of course, low key does not
mean no competition. I
went out for 6 miles the morning of the race, got back and checked the entry
list and saw that Scott Leslie and Pat Caron were signed up. I knew there was no way and hell I
would beat Scott and Pat has been running really well from what I have seen.
Fast forward to race time. The ‘gun’ goes off and boom, Pat flies to the front and he
wasn’t messing around. Scott gave
chase and I was a bit behind with some others. We started up a wide dirt road and then though a parking lot
and then down a short hill with some snow and rocks, which I ran on my warm
up. I found myself go from 20
meters back to on the heels of Scott on this section all the way through the
mile, passed in around 6:04. At that point we are on a
mile long straight, flat, non-technical rail trail. This is where I knew I would start falling back. I ran a decent 5:43 mile, but could no
longer see Scott and Pat had gapped me pretty good as well.
Once off the rail trail, we turned right onto a trail that
was wide, but a bit rocky and wet and generally uphill. You pop off of that trail and follow
the dirt road from earlier back into the finish, around 3.4 miles after you started. A very uneventful race, but I was happy to stay within 33 secs of Scott and 23 secs of Pat. Not a
horrible run.
This would be my 2nd time at this meet and my
first race representing a different USATF team since joining Turtles in 2000. It was a bit weird wearing the blue and white colors of CMS,
but I was excited for more of a team experience in the USATF-NE Grand Prix this
year and this was a nice way to break in the singlet before the series gets
underway in Amherst.
I am not a track runner and I don’t even really enjoy
running track races, especially indoor track races. I decided to only run the 3000 meters this year, afterrunning the 3000, mile and 4 x 800 the previous year. One race on the oval of hell would be enough. I had the goal of breaking 10
mins. I was not overly confident
that I would do this, but figured that was the only possible goal to have.
There were a bunch of runners in the race that I knew and I
had an idea of what they have run recently, so it was easy to have an idea if I
was in the right place. Also, 10
mins is easy math, 40 sec laps.
I made sure not to ge tout too fast and fell into around 7th place or so for the first few laps.
We were a bit slow, but I was OK with that. I remember being 2:43 though 800 meters and shortly after
that I made a move around some runners to get the pace moving a bit. I believe I led that pack from there to
around 3 or 4 laps to go. I was
able to get the pace back under 40 secs per lap and we were now on pace to
break 10 mins. The leading drained
me a bit and I was passed by 3 guys that were on my ass the whole way. I held on pretty well though the finish
to get a finish time of 9:55. I
believe that was 8 secs faster than last year. I’ll take that.
In other news for the year...on top of joining CMS....I was also asked to be part of Jack Pilla's Team Hoka One One New England. I look forward to representing them as well!
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| Some new Hoka One One Speed Instints |
