Not to sound like a broken record but I do not like night races. Next up in the CARS was the Angels 5k in Penacook. Previously held at 8am on a Saturday morning they inexplicably moved to 6pm on a Thursday night. I was not feeling good since the fourth of July race. My training runs were all 20-30 seconds per mile slower than before the 4th and it felt like I was pushing. I also picked up a bit of a strain in my glute/hamstring. This had been bothering me off and on since the Mill Cities Relay back in December. Put it all together and I was not looking forward to racing. I thought that if it went terribly I'd just run through to ensure I pick up some points in the best 6 of 9 races (as I'd missed one already and would miss Luti next week).
I did my normal 6 mile run in the morning and my lunch 4 mile, neither gave me any confidence boost although my hamstring wasn't terrible. I headed up to Concord after work and arrived in plenty of time to collect my number before heading out for a course preview/warm-up. It was about 75 degrees and humid but the cloud cover and a little breeze helped keep it from being bearable. I was tired doing the 3.1 miles and the big hill (.4 at 6% grade) woke me up a bit. This course is deceptively tough. The first half mile has a little bit of up followed by a quad busting downhill to the mile. It is flat from there to 1.6, then up the aforementioned hill. At 2 miles it flattens and stays that way to the finish. Last year I squeaked out a sub-20 (19:58) and generally I'm slower this year so my expectations were tempered. I did another mile in race shoes and headed for the line. My goal was to see how things felt at the 1/2 mile and hopefully run within 30 seconds of last years time.
About 150 runners took off and at the first turn 200 meters in I counted 20 ahead of me. That was not a good sign. I concentrated on sticking to the back of the line of people and was (happily) surprised to hit the half-mile in 3:07 which was only 2 seconds slower than last year. I started to loosen up a bit as I moved into the top 15 by the mile with a fast downhill split of 2:53 (6-flat mile). I latched onto the back of a pack of 4 and had a little back and forth as I hit 1.5 in 9:09 which had me very close to last year's time. I moved toward the front of the group as we hit the hill and into 10th place as one of the guys noted "ouch" as we hit the steepest part. I reached 2 miles in 12:41 (3:32) and knew if I could hold it together I might sneak under 20. At this point I'd pulled away and would run to the finish alone. I could see a couple up ahead but WAY ahead. A 3:11 half had me realizing if I didn't fall apart I could run faster than last year. I kept it together with a last half-mile of 3:09 and staggered across the line in 19:41. I was shocked to run 17 seconds faster than last year! This course is a lot slower than the Capital Classic (18:54) but I knew that going in.
I hope to back off a bit and maybe that'll get me feeling better. Next up will be the Woodchuck "Classic" on July 26.
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