I was hoping I was ready to return to racing as I hadn’t toed the line since getting injured back in mid-August. The USATF NE cross-country championships was on my calendar for a while and I was (sort of) looking forward to this. I put in a couple of workouts leading up to the race but was feeling sluggish as I have for these last 3 months. On race morning I hit the road early to try and loosen up with a 3 mile run. It was much slower than I’d hoped for as the effort and time did not match. I was hopeful I’d feel better at Franklin Park.
I got to the race site a little early and had plenty of time to walk around a bit and check out the new course. Construction at White Stadium meant some of the course needed to be rerouted. It really wasn’t much different from previous versions except we’d be on a bit more pavement and would be taking on Bear Cage hill three times over the 8km (5m) course.
It was nice seeing so many familiar faces setting up team tents and catching up on goings on. Teammate Ernst Linder joined me for a loop of the course and Scott Mindel fresh off a 2:27 marathon the day before (!) caught us at 1.5 miles and ran with us and Tim Van Orden for another loop. The course was in decent shape despite the rain overnight. There was some standing water and a bit of mud but most of it could be avoided. I’d be extra cautious on the turns as they tended to be slick. I struggled through the warm-up again feeling that it was much faster than the 9+ minutes per mile we were doing. I switched into Inov-8 trail running shoes which I hoped would give me enough support and more importantly keep me from slipping. My main goal was to not get hurt and I also hoped to be under 35 minutes as that seems to be what my training and workouts would indicate. A far cry from the 31:39 I’d run for 5 miles back in August!
81 runners made up the masters field (40+ age groups) and I found myself well back in the first 100 meters heading out into the Wilderness section of the course. I kind of found my rhythm and passed a few people. After ½ mile I would only pass another 3 people and that was before the mile. After that, I ran the race alone with no one within 30 seconds of me. It was a little tough with the wind gusting to 30 mph, but mostly it was not terrible. It just felt more like a run on my own than a race. The XC championships tends to just draw the most serious of the serious runners so after a certain time there just aren’t many runners out there. I figured I’d be running mostly alone so it was not a surprise. One guy flew by me at 4 miles but other than that there was no passing one way or the other. I only looked at my watch once (at the mile) as I felt like I was running as hard as I could and the time really wouldn’t make a difference. I chugged into the finish in 35:18, well over my goal and way back in my age group. I never felt good during the race and struggled to just keep going. It was nice getting encouragement along the way and I gave what I had on that day. I limped through a 1 mile warm-down and called it a day.
Our team had a solid race taking 4th, but only 7 points out of first. With three scoring and a small field the team scores were pretty low. Teammate Erik Vandendries had a solid race taking 2nd in the 60+ trailing only my college teammate Jason Cakorous.
60+ Team results
1 HFC 20
2 GSH 22
3 GLRR 24
4 CMS 27
5 BAA 36
60+ Individual results
1 31:12 Jason Cakorous HFC
2 31:36 Erik Vandendries CMS
3 31:54 Mark Hixson GSH
4 32:10 Constantino Rago BAA
5 32:50 Alejandro Heuck GSH
6 33:41 David Westenberg GLRR
7 33:44 Robert McCormack HFC
8 33:58 John Barbour GLRR (70+)
9 35:18 Dave Dunham CMS
10 35:35 Barry Sussman Notch
16 39:03 Ernst Linder CMS
No comments:
Post a Comment