With this years training for the NYC marathon, I have been trying to just let the workouts come to me. As I have gotten older, I have found that I just need more time to recover from hard efforts (workouts). Therefore, I have only been running 2 workouts per week. I am on a 7 day cycle. This also means that I have only done 2 twenty milers so far in my build up to New York.
Having said all that, here is how the race went on Saturday:
Got to Lake Norman early enough on Saturday morning to get a nice and easy warm up in. I met up with John Compton as I started my warm up and we ran together and had a nice conversation (as usual). Put my flats on and did about 5 or 6 easy strides...nothing too fast. Felt good for the start. Let me say that I have not tapered at all in my lead up to this race. Got to the line and he is how it unfolded...
The announcer said something about some dude breaking the course record. He raised his hand and I said to myself...this dude is not going to beat me! Period...
We all get out and I realize rather early that I could not run with the group of guys that I would have liked to have run with. They include Chad, Billy, David, James, Richard, and a couple of other studs...oh well. As it was, I was running 5:52 pace according to my breathing! That was high end for me yet I was rolling. I never felt great, yet I never felt really bad. I'll take that. So, I can't run with the studs, and I did find Kent and Greg who I ended up rolling with for a few miles. That was nice. The course record guy drafted off of me for a lot of miles and I kinda took it like he appreciated my pacing abilities. No sooner did I say that that he actually said that to me. Pretty cool...
So back to the race, Greg starts to slowly pull away from me at the 6 mile mark. I set my sights on Vincent and Kent. I developed a stitch at this point yet it didn't slow me down. I caught Vincent and finally caught Kent on the main road at about mile 8. I'm in 9th place at this point and really wanted to get under 55 minutes, yet I didn't know my time. As I approached the finish, I saw the clock that said 54:45 and whan I saw the results later in the day, Jim had finished 1 place and 20 seconds ahead of me...one tough customer!
Lots of people ran well not least of all John Compton! My average pace was 5:52 and I'll take that on a rolling course. Paul won the overall followed by, maybe Chad, Richard and Billy? Good stuff. I was shut out since I missed 4 races in the first 6...oh well!
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