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Week 79
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Greetings 50+ers! I’ve got finals that still haven’t been graded; grades are due by noon tomorrow, I can give a short personal race recap, but a more colorful race report from the middle of the pack will have to wait another day or two. I hope some of the other runners will be able to chime in on their races.
My week was a tapered week leading into Club XC Nats. My total mileage for the week was about 41, which included yesterday’s race, of course. Log reads as such:
Sun: 5.2 easy
Mon: 7 easy (3.1 am, 3.9 pm) about 2/3rd’s on grass
Tue: 4 w/1@6:18 and 1/2@2:55
Wed: 6 w/ 2x3:00@5:45 pace, and 2x1:30@5:25 pace + shorter strides
Thur: 7 easy w/5.2 on grass
Fri: 3.5 easy
Sat: 8.2 w/10k hilly, muddy XC race in 39:48
No intervals again. Tues and Wed I did some pick-ups just to get some leg turnover without pushing my body into needing recovery. I actually felt pretty rested and ready going into Saturday’s race.
The short of it, regarding the race, is that the hills and mud took their toll; not just on me, but it seems most were reporting that by mile 4, they were just feeling spent.
My splits were: 5:54,6:16,6:27,6:24,6:45,6:41,1:22
Because of the long downhill on the first mile, even holding back, everyone was fast. After that, it was 2-3/4 laps of 3 uphills, 3-downhills (you don’t get the third downhill on the third partial loop.)
Even though I felt great at mile 2, I intentionally throttled it back a little, sensing that I wasn’t going to make it at that second mile pace, and 6:25 pace was feeling good for the next couple miles, so I felt that was a good pace. But on the uphill at mile 4, knowing that we still had another lap to go, I could just feel the air getting let out of the tires….and quickly. I struggled on that last lap, as did many. But I’m happy that my time was only 10s slower than three years ago, considering that many of the front runners had slowed by 1-1/2 to 3 minutes compared to what they had run back on that day in ‘09.
Sorry that I missed a lot of the wilder stuff that ensued after the awards were handed out. I took my wife back home, spent some time with her, and was waiting for Dave to call as to when they were going to move on to one of our local microbreweries. Well, things didn’t go quite as planned, and they never left the bar at the awards. Meanwhile, in the bar, there was mayhem. Some folks, who shall remain nameless, had to be carted off to their rooms, and everyone was being kicked out as I arrived back at the venue….except for Dave and a few of his Front Line buddies, who apparently weren’t associated with the rowdy crowd. The barkeeps let me in, and I was able to join them. In the end, I didn’t get to meet many other than Dave and a few of his crew, but we did have a good time talking over a few pitchers. Maybe Dan A. from the socal squad, who joined up with us after things had settled, can send my greetings to his socal buddies.
On a sad note, a woman was hit and killed by a fire truck just outside the hotel where many of the runners were staying:
http://www.kentucky.com/2012/12/09/2437194/pedestrian-killed-in-accident.html
No word at this point who it was; I certainly hope it wasn’t one of our visiting runners. Regardless, my condolences to the friends and family of the victim.
OK, that’s about all I got for now. I feel like I can settle back and enjoy some weeks of just running for fun. I’ll keep workouts to a minimum and maybe just throw in a little Fartlek to keep it interesting.
It’s time for me to get back to grading. Have a great week, everyone, as we work and run our way through this holiday season…try not to gain too much weight.