Time: 10:00 AM
Weather: ~75 degrees, extremely humid - heavy downpour started immediately after I finished
Course Conditions: Mostly grass with a short steep sledding hill twice
Time: 20:55
Overall: 2/80
Division: 2/10
THE COURSE
The image below from the race's website isn't 100% accurate, the trails through the woods aren't perfectly straight and we didn't get to run onto the field, but it gives you a decent picture. About 2/3 of the course was ran on grass, which with some rain in the previous couple of days and the humidity in the air, made the ground seem extremely soft. At the far southwest corner of the course is sledding hill that is about 40-50 yards long with an elevation gain of probably 40 feet.
WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
The best part of this race to me was the cause. In this era of budget cuts, so many of the "non-essential" areas of schools are getting cut to the bare minimum or entirely, to be able to do something small (and fun) to give kids at a couple of elementary schools access to some additional gym equipment is pretty cool.
The other great part were the age group trophies. As some of you may know I collect bobbleheads, so for the trophy to be a bobblehead (rather than a medal or an even more useless tiny trophy) made me extremely happy.
WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
The humidity. I can't even begin to describe how heavy the air was during the race. You could tell that it was going to rain, but the sky just wouldn't open up.
That freaking sledding hill. It's not the amount of elevation gain, and it's not so much that we had to do it once, but that we had to do it twice. The incline just eats at your legs and lungs, destroying most hopes for a good time...
OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS
There are races that I run every year where I explicitly know that I'm not going to win, Crazylegs and the Berbee Derby are two examples. When I entered this race I figured there would be a chance I'd do very well. I knew it was going to be the first running of the race, and that it was going to be very small. I'm not even close to the fastest runner out there, but I will admit that I'm faster than most. Walking up to the starting line, I kept looking back to try and find someone who looked like they were faster than me. At first I didn't find anyone and was somewhat concerned I would actually be the one winning this thing... Not that I didn't want to win, but that I don't feel like I'm the type that should be winning (at least right now when I'm unhappy with the shape I'm in). About 30 seconds before the race I did spot one person I thought would be faster than me, and I was right, he went on to win in a time nearly three minutes faster than me...
But as far as the race, I went out too fast thinking that I could keep up with the aforementioned faster guy and thinking I was in better shape than I was. I went through the first mile in approximately six minutes, which was where I was hoping to be, but my body did not like the fact that I had 2.1 miles left to run. As much as I tried to keep my pace up, my legs and lungs just weren't having it. I struggled through the last couple of miles with no one to pull me along or push me, as the guy who won was too far ahead and everyone behind me wasn't going to catch me (though if it had been a four mile race he may have), which likely caused my time to be slower than it could have been, but that's not really of concern now.
Overall I was disappointed with my run. Which just means I'll put in more work to get to a place where I hopefully won't feel the same way after my next race.
Side Note: Format of race report shamelessly stolen from Tim (with the exception of the "Song that should have been on my iPod" section, as I don't listen to music while I run. It works great for him, so I'll try it for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment