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Week 62
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Hello Fellow 50+ers. Sad that the Olympics coming to a close. I’m typing this as I watch the Men’s Marathon. It’s still pretty tight for these first few miles, concerned that Hall has fallen off this pace. Meb is helping push the pace; weird to think that he’ll be a Masters runner come the next Olympics in Rio (as will Lagat).
At any rate, for my week, I managed just under 40 miles on 7 days. The log reads as such:
Sun: 5 easy
Mon: 5 easy/3.5 on trails
Tue: 4 easy
Wed: 4 w/8x1/2-lap on, 1/2-lap off (the funky 4 laps = 1500m...with a small hill...track)
Thu: 5 w/1 in 5:50
Fri: 5.5 easy-to-moderate
Sat: 11 w/5K race in 18:01
Notes: It was a fairly pedestrian week. Once again, the heat and humidity took its toll on my training. Also, the 16 miler that I ran last Saturday had its affect on me on the first few days of the week. Wednesday’s track workout was kept simple, as we knew we were going to race on Saturday (plus it was hot again!) Thursday, I ran a race-pace mile in the middle of a 5-mile run. Saturday, I ran 3 miles in the morning, then a mile warm-up followed by the race, and then a long 4-mile cool-down after the race.
My race report will not be as detailed and colorful as the last one. The weather broke in the late part of the week, so the temperature and humidity were much lower in recent years. There were about 4670 finishers for this evening race through the downtown of Lexington. Very festive atmosphere, bands playing, lots for non-runners to do and eat, and Fastest-Kid-in-Town races held earlier in the evening. Lexington’s downtown is about 3/4-miles long, along three main streets (Vine, Main, and Short) so the course basically runs Southeast on Vine, Runs Northwest on Short (with a small jog) passing the mile mark, circles around the water-wall along by Rupp Arena, before heading Southwest on Main where we hit the 2-mile mark. Continue to the end of downtown before turning back on to Vine and running the length of downtown into the finish. As usual, a huge number of kids head out way too fast for the first 1/2-mile. So you end up passing all these kiddos for the first part (took me about 4s just to get to the start.) We were starting to spread out pretty well by about the mile mark, where I came through at 5:37. I continued to slowly pick off fast starters through-out the second mile, as I surprised myself and came through the 2-mile mark at 11:20. At this point, I think I allowed the knowledge of my pace to mess with my mind, because I immediately started thinking about whether I could sustain this for another mile, and my pace slowed (although honestly, I really haven’t done the tempo work necessary, so no surprise that I couldn’t hold pace). So I came through the 3-mile in 17:28, before striding through the finish in 18:01 chip time. Won the 50-54 by about a minute, but Randy McDowell, in the 55-59 age division was still about a minute ahead of me as the fastest grand-master in the race. My time was slower than my PR on this course of 17:41 from three years ago (two years ago, they ran on a different course due to road construction, and last year my knee issues kept me out.) All things considered, I’m pretty pleased, although I would have loved to get back under 18.
OK, so while writing this, the pace has picked up as Kiprotich takes off…..and Ryan Hall and Abdi have both dropped out!! WTF! Sharp turns take their toll on them? And Meb is getting dropped by the chase pack. What a disappointment; and such is the uncertainty of the marathon.
Hope everyone is having a great week. What’s on your mind?