First I have to get this out of the way: It was southern bayou swamp-ugly out there. No less than 87 degrees at race time with humidity easily up toward 90% (at the time I’m writing this it is 79%). The air was just ridiculously heavy and I found it really hard to breathe.
Long about 4PM, I started thinking about how this race was going to run, and it was tough. I was having difficulty contemplating how this would be a good run for me. I was confident this would no go well.
No sooner had I gotten to the starting area, when I had to turn tail and head back to the parking area porta-potties. Hard to tell if it was a benefit to have to…uh…you know…so lighten my body weight, but it was certainly better to have the facilities there than not. That would have made for a very ugly 5 miles.
This is a local race run by my running club, so there were a lot of familiar faces which I certainly appreciated – I took a job recently close to Boston and the additional commuting time has been killing my social life with these folks, so it was appreciated to have the opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces. My daughter even came to race from her new place in New Hampshire, and that made my heart happy.
This was my first race since the North Face at the beginning of June and my first street race since the Worcester Fire Fighters 6k in May. I came THAT close to not having had a race in July. I mean the fact that this is only my 15th race this year astounds me a little given what the past few years have looked like.
Holden is a little town in Central Massachusetts, which means that it’s not flat. The Warren course is a loop, starts generally down for the first mile, rolling hills for the second, down for the next half, up for the mile and then mostly down.
It can be pretty challenging to be sure.
So at the start of the race, I’d run maybe 3/10 of a mile when my shoe came untied. It’s been more than a year since the LUK 5k when my shoe came undone and my friend Jeff sold me on Lace Locks. I haven’t worn sneakers with laces since…until today. Curiously enough that first mile was pretty quick. I ran the second and third mile at roughly equivalent speeds – with a fair degree of walking in there. The fourth mile, where you see that big up part,took me 9:07 (73′ of gain) and then it was pretty much downhill from there, where I notched the fastest mile of the race and second only to the last 4/10 of the rce where I paced in at 7:13, ultimately finishing 26th at 43:39.
Now a couple of my friends were pretty well dehydrated, and while both finished, one had to leave in an ambulance for fluids. The heat and humidity were no joke. I’m honestly surprised I did as well here as I did. The lack of racing in general hasn’t helped but my increased sedentary time could not have helped my fitness level. The last few weeks I’ve seen my runs get sloggier and slower. Could be sleep, or bad diet, or whatever, but tonight I pulled through it until it felt good. Which makes it that much setter for me: I PR’d this course tonight by just about 7-minutes officially (for the three times I’ve run this race) and by roughly 3:20 if I include training runs last year. So I may have lost a little off my fast ball recently, it’s nice to know that I’m still racing reasonably well.
My daughter also hadn’t raced in sometime – since the Celtic 5k actually – and hadn’t run more than 4-miles in months, and she rocked the course too: Meaning she did not finish last.
The club puts on an afterparty where awards are announced and there are gift giveaways and food. Incredible value for the $15-20 registration fee. Good fun, great folks.
Results
2019:56th Annual 26th 43:34
2018:54th Annual 58th 50:35
2017: 53rd Annual 33rd 50:31
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