norrin radd
Member |
 posted Jun-24-2007 11:17 PM
  
Well it’s been a wacky month for me. I’d been planning on more races but two trips to England put paid to that. The second one, for a funeral, took up most of the early part of this week – left Saturday, arrived 22 hours later on Sunday, returned Wednesday. We also have our house on the market and offers are due this coming Wednesday. All told a fairly stressful time. My mileage has suffered quite a bit (running up and down plane aisles is probably against the new FAA rules) but I was looking forward to the race today. I thought that my goal of sub-40 was a bit of a stretch but I was confident I could get close. My previous best time from last September, just after I’d started running again, was 43:51 on the same course.The race is a monthly event put on by the Lake Merritt Joggers and Striders running club. Simultaneous 5, 10 and 15 k races – one, two or three laps of Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. The combined turnout for the three races is not large, usually just over a hundred runners I think unless it is one of their special events. It was a beautiful day in the San Francisco Bay Area and after an explanation of the course the race started fairly promptly at 9am and clearly my legs were itching to go. I didn’t think I’d taken off that fast until I checked my time at the ½ mile mark. Well, there isn’t actually a half mile mark, but I’ve worked out where it is based on an online mapping tool. I’ve used it before and am fairly sure it’s pretty accurate. I was expecting 3.10 or maybe 3.05 but was shocked to see 2.57. Oops. I was running with someone at this point and didn’t want to lose the pacing so I thought I’d hang in as long as we eased off a bit, which we seemed to be doing. I missed the mile marker and the person I was running with said, I thought, 6.25. Wow, we really slowed there. At this point I should mention that the course is not closed (but the entry is just $3), and so half of my mental power, which plummets when I run, was taken up dodging pedestrians, cyclists, dogs and geese, all of which were abundant on this fine June morning. This also explains why I was finding it hard to judge the pace. Only when we went through mile 2 in a total of 12:21 did I realize my mistake. Mile one must have been 6.05, and mile two 6.16. I knew I couldn’t keep this up, and mile 3 must have been around 6.49 since I finished the first 5k lap in 19:50. Not bad, but the first lap had taken more out of me than it should. I wasn’t too confident of a sub-20.10 second lap. At this point the race is on a fairly quiet road and the strangest thing happened as a squirrel darted out in front of me so close that I actually kicked it – not intentionally, it was just that close to my foot as I was running The squirrel stopped, looked at me, and then scampered across the road. Weird. Although mile 3 is always slightly slower for me on this course, the first mile (and the fourth mile for the 10k, and the seventh mile if you do the 15k) is usually faster but unfortunately I missed this split again. Back calculating though it must have been about 6.39. At mile 5 I was clearly losing it since I saw the total time of 33 minutes dead and thought this meant I had 7 minutes for the last mile. Easy! I ran in blissful ignorance for a while, although to my credit I don't think I slowed, until it dawned on me that there’s 0.2 miles in there as well. Doh! Now I was back on the tough, for no apparent reason, final mile of the lake circuit. Coming up to the finish I knew I was now over 40 minutes and was now trying to get as close to 40 as possible. Could I keep it under 40:30. Yep, just, 40:29. So, a big personal best, but that wasn’t surprising. Didn’t make a sub-40 but I did get close enough that it has helped my confidence. I’m sure I can find some extra time by better pacing, on a closed course and if I had someone to run with. After easing off a little in mile 3 I was running on my own for the rest of the race. I'll be back.
IP: Logged |
Or it was the lucky squirrel that gave you such speed! Congratulations, that was an exciting race. At least the weather is cool there still. Good job!
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