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Week 178
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Greetings, 50+ers! Thanks, ladies, for getting this party started. As Rtype surmised, I’m late on account of the HM this morning. Race was a 7am, then we had to wait around and drive back to Lexington, so I’ve not had a chance to log in until now.
My running weeks go from Sunday through Saturday, so the HM “should” be on next week’s report, but I’ll bring it in today; as for the “usual” week, I did pretty much “squat”. I was completely off Sunday, Monday, Friday, and Saturday. I did a little track work on Tuesday, just a mile warm-up, followed by 3-miles averaging HM pace, and a mile cool-down. We ran the 3 miles 200 on, 200 off, with the 200 on about 10s faster than the 200 off. Knee held up, but I spent a lot of the whole week trying to rub it into submission. Wednesday and Thursday were both very short 1.5 miles jogs to try and loosen up the knee….but opted to just rest it Friday and Saturday. So in the end, I only managed 8-miles for the week. Combining this anemic last half of the previous week (no running) means that I’d only run 8-miles in the previous 10 day leading up to today.
So I ran an HM this morning. And I did run better than I think I had a right to, but also I didn’t run it very smartly. I decided to just latch on the 1:30 pace guy (who was aiming more for 1:29 than 1:30) and hang on as long as I could, knowing that I’d fall off the back at some point….just wasn’t sure when that would be. I was figuring 1:34 was a reasonable goal for where I’m at right now, knee and all and no “real” long run training. In the end, my chip time was 1:31:34. Here are the splits: 645,640,648,644,653,654,654,709,722,724,719,731,725,47. My Garmin had the course mapped out to 13.12 miles, and it registered within 10 m or so of every mile marker. I’ve never seen such good agreement with a course before. Thanks goodness for the time change. That meant that the 7am start felt more like 8am. The temperature stayed about 30 degrees for the whole race. This is West Virginia, so you’d think the course might be hilly, but Huntington is a river city, so really the only hills were coming up from the river, going under some viaducts, and finally entering Marshall U.’s Stadium. The plan was actually working pretty for the first six miles (we actually came through the 10k @41:22, and I was feeling reasonable), but then the course goes onto this cindered trail surface (Very scenic, though) for the next 3 or so miles, and that’s when the wheels fell off for me. I don’t know whether it was my general hip weakness, lack of distance fitness, my arthritic big toes, or a combination thereof, but I was clearly laboring more and lost pace and contact with the 1:30 pace guy; you can see the dramatic loss of pace during those few miles. By the time we got off it, my quads (especially the right one) were not in good shape, and I pretty much struggled the rest of the way home. I was depressing to watch a bunch of people pass me during the last 5 miles, but then most of them turned the corner and were running the marathon! So lucky me, I only lost about 3 places in the HM for all that struggling, and still ended up winning the 55-59 age group (OK, so there were only 26 in that group, but hey). Overall impression is that it’s not a bad venue, has some small-town appeal, and the opulent food at the finish was appreciated, but the cinders didn’t work for me at this stage; other years, I think it would have been OK. Also, dropping down the steep ramp into the stadium on spent quads was a little dicey, thank goodness I made it down without incident, I was able to catch the football and carry it the last 80 yards for the touchdown! The trip was a great success, not just for the running, but it’s just more fun to make these road trips with the club and to have their fellowship before, during, and after the race. Even if I did do all the driving.
OK. In lieu of the tardiness of this report, I’ll eschew the quote for this week. Anything anyone want to offer up?
Oh, and kudos to my old HS, Madison West, on their dominant win in the Wisconsin State XC Championships. It was a surprise they won so handily, but not a surprise that Olin Hack (Tim Hacker’s son) won the title. What was perhaps a surprise was that he was only 5-seconds off Solinsky’s course record…one that no one previous has come within 40 seconds of (sorry for ending with a preposition, too tired to reword it). Skinnbones, what do you think of Midwest going 1-2 at Footlocker Nationals, I've felt for a while now that Olin Hacker is better than people know...mostly because he was over-raced going into the national championship season both last fall and in track this spring. He was held out of a few races this XC season, so hopefully, he'll be fresher for the stretch run.
OK, that's all I got. Wish I could say that I'm heading to National XC next weekend, but I don't think I can spring two weekends in a row, especially since we have our own Thanksgiving Day race to prepare (for which I've become the default point man.) Good luck to those that make the journey!
You guys inspire me! Keep up the great work!
All the Best!