Our St Pat's 4 miler was Saturday, and we had light snow coming down, starting 2 hours before the race. The race was in about 28 degree weather, with a bit of breeze that was mostly crosswind. Though certified, a hilly loop course. Given the ups and downs, I chose a light-weight trainer (new Pegasus 33) instead of racing flats (LunaRacer) and ran 34:00 for the 4, with the final, flatter, tailwind mile in 8:05.5. Upside was 2nd in 65-69 to a 30:31, and 3rd was only 19 seconds behind me. Downside was just not feeling too fast or having much grip. We'd only had one track session since our 5 km of two weeks ago, and we'd stopped after 3 x 400 d/t the wind and cold, so perhaps my anaerobic fitness was less, but sure didn't run up to the level of that race.
The upside was seeing my wife perform her "magic". She didn't want to go to the race, fearing slick roads. But since it was not icy, I talked her out of bed after 30 minutes of added rest for her. So our warm-up was so-so from the cold, but she chose the Luna-Racers and she felt the grip was pretty good. She ran all 4 miles under 8:00, finished in 31:26 (vs. 31:50 last year on dry roads!) and won her age group 55-59 (she's 59) by two seconds! Guess it paid for her to challenge every 20-something that was around her, she gets so fired up with the young ones. So that was fun and shows she's on track for her 1 mile race in early June, where a sub 7 is the goal.
Mike F, we never do any 100''s, seems too risky on the hamstrings and also seems to really drain us for the following day's run. Do you find that to happen or do you hold back a lot?
Congrats to all teams that made the Big Dance, our Iowa Hawkeyes blew it by not winning any games at the Conference tourney, and so are sent to the Little Prom instead (NIT).