Ran the Mud in Your Eye XC 6k on Saturday morning and ended up running pretty well. I warmed up for a couple of easy miles, and wasn’t too happy with my calf still feeling the effects of Thursday’s track workout. However, once the race was underway I soon forgot about it as I concentrated on a steady pace instead.
I took it fairly easy in the early stages and found myself in about 12th place as we headed out towards the mile mark. The lead two or three runners already had a big lead but I was happy to sit back and stay comfortable. I hit the mile in 5:58 and decided it was time to pick up the place a little and passed several runners in the next quarter mile. Next time I looked up I was in 4th place and about 15-20 seconds back from the third place guy – the same guy who’d beaten me in a couple of 5k races earlier this year.
Try as I might, I couldn’t make enough ground in the last 3 or 4k to move into 3rd place. However, my pace stayed consistent (5:58, 5:58 and 5:57) and I ended up just 11 seconds away from 3rd place. Finish time was 22:05 for an average 5:55 per mile pace, so I guess I finished the pretty quick in the last half mile or so. Now I’m looking forward to the last race of the series on February 28th – an 8k cross country race at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk. I wonder if I’ll be able to make up the 15 seconds and move into third place overall??
Sunday was my typical long run day. Nothing too exciting to report – I ran 8 miles towards the Virginia Beach oceanfront, turned around and ran home. Of course the wind was behind me on the way out which made for a challenging run home into a pretty stiff headwind. Nice. Good training for the traditionally-windy Shamrock Marathon though…
Summary: 16 miles in 1 hour 56 minutes – not a bad pace and nice that the calf issue seems to have cleared up.
Man, I gotta start racing. Seems like every time I turn around, you have a race report. So… jealous…
Ah, I love to race, and it’s one less speed workout to do during the week.
Can’t wait to read all about your triathlon – that’ll be one interesting race report…
Hey Steve! I had been checking the blog, wondering when you’d post the race report on the XC series. It sounds like you’re doing very well! I also hope you catch that guy in the next race, and beat him by those 15 seconds! I still don’t know how you run so fast after all of that speed work, stay warm out there!