Another Day another Race

This weekend I ended up running a local 8K road race. I had not planned to run but I kind of wanted to get a check on where I was in my preparation for the Vulcan 10 in two weeks. I won't go into every detail of the race but as it turns out I ran a pretty good avg pace for the 5 miles. Miles splits were

6:41; 7:02; 7:02; 6:38; 6:57

So.. started out good.. mile two had a hill and as most will do in a 5 miles race I held back a little in mile three.. Mile 4 had a slight down grade.. not enough to seem like you were going down hill but enough to help your pace. I don't know what happened in the last mile.. I don't feel that I slowed up any.. all I can think was that there were two long straight sections that lead to the finish and both were going into a headwind that was pretty steady.

I think my over all effort for the race was 90 - 95 percent. I never really "hurt" or felt that I just couldn't reach down for more and for whatever reason I just kept it on cruise to the finish. In fact, I turned around right after the finish and ran a cool down of a little over 2 miles.

Great Event!

I have to say the inaugural running of the Montgomery Half Marathon must be considered a GREAT success. I was totally surprised at the number of runners that accepted the challenge of the 13.1 mile course. And I thought that the longest race in this River Regions area that could be a success, was 10K. I was proved VERY wrong.. and I'm glad to say I was wrong!

I was glad that Scott Strand of Birmingham was the winner. Scott is a truely blessed runner that did a great job of picking out his parents! He is a humble and soft spoken man, but put a pair of racing shoes on him and he's like a crazy wind. His race time of 1:10 is great, and oh by the way...did I mention that he is 41 years old.. that makes him a member of the "Masters" class! Yep.. he is good.

As for my race, I am fairly satisfied with the time I ran. The race gave me an idea of the training areas that I need to emphasis during my winter training for the half marathons I have scheduled in January and February 2010. Longer training runs of 14 - 15 miles are in order and I also need to put regular one mile interval training days into my schedule. This will go far to help with a couple of things that happened during the race. My legs really gave out at mile 10 and it wasn't the hill that did it. I could feel tightness in my thighs about three mile into the race and by the time I got to the end they were totally spent and there wasn't anything left for the last two miles (Longer runs and speed work will help with both of these).

It was great to be in downtown Montgomery before the race and seeing all the fellow runners warming up chatting it up with other runners. taking about training.. how they are going to do in the race (or how bad). :-)

The splits above show that I started out and went through the the first eight miles at a pretty good and somewhat even pace.. but then I started to suffer a little after that..I ended the slide with an 8:24 - 12th mile.. I was hurting pretty bad. But thankfully I got to thinking about the last mile and knew that I would be given the gift of a 1/2 mile of downhill running and then I would see the finish line. That was enough to get me through to the finish.  I got passed by several people during the last 1.5 miles and each person that passed me increased my temper. There is NO way these people train harder than me.. or put in more miles that me.. They WILL NOT pass me again in the next race!! OK.. I'm back now.. just had to blow off a little steam.  You see, my running thrives off of my "failures".. and I work off of that burning competitiveness to make myself better... Like the Mercedes race... I stood at the starting line of this race with the thought in my head, " I can't wait for next year.. I am going to do so much better?"