Lone Gull 10k

 I was not planning on racing until late October as I had knee surgery at the tail end of July.  I've been running for four weeks now and phasing out the biking and ElliptiGo.  CMS only had two guys entered in the USATF NE 10km championships (Lone Gull - Gloucester MA) and needed a third to have a scoring team.  I wasn't really ready to race but figured just finishing 10k would be better than CMS not scoring at all.  I told team manager Scott Mindel that I had completed a training run (7 miles in 7:35's) and felt confident I could run under 730s and maybe even as fast as close to 7-flat.  CMS took care of my entry and teammate Dan Verrington would be my transportation.  You can't beat that!

Dan did the nearly 3 hour drive from his new place in Vermont and picked me up at 6:30am.  A quick stop at Dunk's and we were on our way.  It was nice to catch up with Dan as we made our way to Cape Ann.  We got our numbers and met up with many fellow CMS runners including 60'er Gary Cattarin. There were so many familiar faces.  It is always fun going to a New England championship, even if I wasn't really ready to run a race.  Dan and I did an easy 2 mile warm-up, but it did not feel all that easy.  I had felt very good on Friday and maybe pushed it a bit and then felt terrible on Saturday and it rolled over into Sunday morn.  We switched into race gear (although I did not use carbon fiber shoes - saving those for 'real' racing) and we walked across the beach over to the start.  I did another mile to stay loose and it was just a few minutes before the 9am start.

I'd looked up last year's results and found that 730 pace would put me about 350th out of 700. That gave me a decent idea of where to line up.  I counted about 25 rows back which put me around 300th and was surprised to find Dan back there.  He mentioned something about a slow start which made sense, you don't want to get dragged out too fast.  It was close to 60 degrees and there was a strong wind that'd be a tail wind for the first 2 then a cross wind through 3.5 followed by a LOT of headwind to finish the race.  I figured whatever I hit the first half-mile in (for pace) would be what I'd aim to run the whole race.  Off we went and I just tried to not get tripped up by people not really paying attention and cutting across my path.  I nearly got taken out at the mile by a woman who basically went from one side of the road to the other without ever looking, she nearly clipped me and when I put a hand on her back she turned and gave me a very dirty look. Gary C was there and he laughed and said "I saw that!".  Too funny.

My first half-mile split was 3:30 so I figured it'd be 7-minute pace that'd be my goal.  I had a bunch of people blow by in the first half-mile but after that I guess that maybe only 3-4 people passed me the rest of the race and after 2 miles I passed a LOT of people.  As I worked my way back along the ocean after the 5k (21:40) the wind was tough.  I was catching a lot of people and any time I tried to tuck in I found it too slow and would move on to the next pack.  Around 4 I noticed a couple of 60+ guys up ahead and set my sites on them.  I had a pretty strong finish with a second 5k of 21:25 despite the wind.  The 43"05 got me 12th in the 60+ and 277th in a field of 747.  Dan had a solid run just missing breaking 40 minutes and Gary was just 2 places behind me.  I'm happy with how it went although both my knee and my other quad were quite sore after.  Hopefully nothing too serious.  It was fun to get out there and always great to be able to help the team.

We finished the day with a very achy 2 mile warm-down with others flying by us but luckily no one knocking us down.