26 June 2012

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What a perfect evening for a couple of short cross country races. The Facebook and Twittersphere had been blowing up with "smack talk" between Cary Long, David Bier, Jason Shattuck, Mike Dehaye and myself. Well, Mike has not been actively "talking" but he's involved by association. Basically, all guys mentioned have been running pretty close to each other over the various race distances and the Summer Cross Country series have given us all an opportunity to push each other at least once a week over the various race distances of 1, 2 & 3 miles. I actually think these friendly competitions have already made me faster and I would venture to guess that the same is true for a couple of the other guys as well. I can just see the Fall 5K race PRs falling already.

Jason and I both decided to take it really easy over the 1 mile distance. As it happened I ran it in 9:30, but there really is no reason to push the pace over this distance as it is the warm up mile for almost all runners.

When I lined up for the 3 mile distance race, I wanted to make sure I stayed with Jason. I knew he would be at faster than me, the question was by how much. I figured staying with him would give me a  decent time. I also kept an eye on the other usual suspects. I knew if any of us stayed close until the final half mile that it would be quite a final stretch. As it turned out, Mike pulled away early and Jason did the same. I stayed with Jason until the half way point, were I started to loose sight of him for a while. However, I started to see Mike again and I decided to try to stay with him similar to the week before. When we reached the final half mile, I spotted Jason again just 10 seconds or so ahead of us. I decided to try to push past Mike and just like last week, he did not drop off. We pushed each other to the finish, shortening the gap to Jason as we crossed the finish line. I ended up with a new personal CR of 20:46, almost 30 seconds faster than before. Will I be able to break the 20 minute barrier this year?

This afternoon, I also decided to run the 2 mile race distance for the first time. I fully expected to crumble as it was hot and I felt exhausted, but to my surprise, I was able to run a nice pace, finishing 6th in 13:28. These XC runs have added a fun weekly tempo training session to my 100 mile training plan. I look forward to another fun filled Tuesday next week.

2 comments:

  1. This year had been a year of CRs for me at the XC runs. However, this day was rough. It felt great beating the Bier the week before...he crushed me this week. One day I'm gonna spank you like a newborn.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been faster each race so far also. Probably won't hold up though. Unless I don't make too many races!

    ReplyDelete

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