Sitting at the airport reflecting on Clubs:
It was the largest field ever assembled, so I was a little worried about getting out well. There was a guy before the race stating that there was at least 100 guys going to be hammering at the front. I had to kind of chuckle as I thought he was way off, and may e a little too excited. The start was very smooth. I don't think I ran balls out, but got to the front with ease and then tucked in around 15 place to let the field sort of spread out. Our man Greg Mitchell just went to the front and decided to just lead it wire to wire. I was content to float in the back until guys started to pay for going with him. I didn't have a watch but when we started the second loop, and started pressing and guys began coming back. John Howell and I moved up to 5 and 6 with a BAA guy and proceeded to duke it out over the final 2000. With 600 to go we all started sprinting and repeating that all the way to the finish. With about 100 to go I unleashed what I thought was a solid final blow and it dropped the BAA guy, but then John found another gear and battled past me, and we fought for 5th all the way to the line. I was so happy for our team as I think we all ran nearly as well as we could have. I think Oscar could have been top 10 as he had been close to us all season, so he was a little sub par but not much. Our 5th man Josh held it strong to the finish and we were finally national champs. We really didn't know though as our 3-4-5 were pretty close to ATC, so we didn't want to get carried away. It was about three hours later we finally sorta figured we had it, as results were slow in coming. All in all I was happy with our efforts as it isn't easy to get 6 guys healthy all the way to December.
Congrats to Tonys team, as the west coast represented this time through. San Fran will be fun.
Our Allstar Open team was considered the greatest team assembled the never assembled. The pros are a nice addition to the mix and I like that some of them want to run, but getting a whole team of them is nearly impossible which was the case here. German got delayed in Salt Lake and we had to drive to JFK sat morning at 6:30am to get him and look how well he ran. He was really happy he didn't go back home as he really want to race. Ryan Hill is a very humble champion and it was fun to hang with him and Tegencamp at the hotel. We polished of a 24 pack of Philly's oldest beer. Nice to see these guys as just regular guys. Tara Erdmann was also with us and was super happy with her finish too. Alberto is extending her season as well as she is really coming around. Our girls team was a little hit by injury but they ran solid and got 5th. People think this club gets a lot of perks, but we all had to pay our own way here, so to make it all happen is really a treat that everyone wanted to run.
Now I'm taking a week off and hoping to break in 2015 with a masters PR. In the half and get another sub 15 5000 somewhere on the track.
Stay healthy all
Ahrlin