This was an interesting day: when I went to bed last night, my plan was to go for a run in the morning, hit my bootcamp workout at noon, and maybe do yardwork or something. Then I woke up later than anticipated and I decided that I would just stick with my usual morning routine. I looked at my work schedule and realized bootcamp at noon wouldn’t work, so I decided to run instead and then I’d hit bootcamp a little later in the afternoon or evening.
As part of my usual routine, I walk down to a local coffee shop, get a coffee – perhaps a breakfast of some kind – and peruse Facebook for a bit. Well, one of my friends had posted something about this race; I had done it a couple of years ago and thought it would be a good thing to try again. Alas, it was sold out, and when I commented on her post that I was bummed, she suggested that they usually do transfers. In turn I emailed the race director, who to his credit responded quite promptly and said they would transfer. Perfect, now I just needed to find someone to transfer. I could try bootcamp if my meetings ended soon enough or just lay low at noon and do the workout later on in the afternoon.
I posted the question on my running club’s Facebook page, but by noon hadn’t seen any comments, so I decided to go back to my second iteration of a plan and went for a 6-mile run at lunch. By this point, I came to find someone had responded and offered a bib. I hadn’t planned for this, but it was time to roll — I bagged bootcamp plans and made plans to race. One thing I forgot though was to make plans to actually meet the person who had the bib. That small issue aside, it was a perfect New England summer evening for such a race.
The course is an out-and-back along a rail trail in Marlborough, MA. The trail crosses a couple of streets, down through an office campus, and back. It’s predominantly downhill for the first half, and then it’s all climb on the way back.
This evening was low-humidity and about 75-degrees. Just a perfect evening. The start was a little rocky, a narrow street with the expectation runners would stay on the sidewalk until we got to the rail trail, and with cars parked on the side of the street, it made for a little congestion, but once on the trail it was clear. Given the elevation profile of the course, I knew the first half was downhill, so I decided to go out quickly to be sure I got some benefit from the downhill. I knew from my Monday night training run using another local race course as practice, that my hillwork needs…well, work, so I figured I’d throw my fat body down the hills and do my best to not die on the way back up. Monday’s run was about 387′ of gain, tonights was about 262′, so I figured I could weather it as long as I didn’t use all my fuel.
This more or less worked to my advantage. A couple of times on the way back, I slowed to a walk – my heart rate was really up there and I knew it would be difficult to keep moving at pace, a comfortable few seconds of walking to get that under control and readjust. Surprisingly enough, that turned out to be a pretty good strategy for maximizing my race pace.
Two years ago, I ran this race to a then personal record 10k time of 56:30. Tonight, I ran 51:00. Now, it’s a USATF certified course which means that the course itself will usually be a little bit longer to ensure the distance qualifies as a 10k. I clocked it at 6.3 miles, the same distance I got when I last ran it. For a 6.3 mile run, my self-timed pace came in at 8:06 minute/miles, officially its a tad slower at 8:12, but the total time that’s a constant. 51:00. I’m very happy.
RESULTS
July 18, 2018: 51:00
July 20, 2016: 56:30
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