I’d started my first warm up run 80 minutes ago, it was nigh 7 p.m., and it really felt like it was time to settle down for the evening. There was a certain yawn-inducing mugginess to the otherwise mild air. Ah, and I could still savor the excesses of my consumption over the previous two days, which included a mighty crab feast, heaps of pizza, indulgent ice cream cake, and a flood of hoppy carbonation. Basically my worst pre-race diet ever (though on the day of I ate lean and healthily), but that was inevitable considering that the final summer track series night had unfortunately been scheduled for July 31^st. Nonetheless, despite these impediments to readily rampant racing, I found myself lined up all the same amongst the score of racers gathered over by the far corner of the Patuxent High School track. A quiet, nervous anticipation mingled with the dim evening’s humidity as we leaned forward, poised to commence the region’s longest track race.

Coming into the event I’d been quite wary of DeWitt, the conqueror from California, but I’d not anticipated that the entire Hall brigade would invade the track (what ever happened to Great Mills XC?). Thus the 5000m talent was distinctly more stacked than it had been either of the two previous years. Spying upon the event sign up sheets, however, provided curious insight. While DeWitt, known to run 5ks sub-16:30, had modestly put down 17:30 as his projected time, Jereamy --- alpha of the Hall litter (as opposed to poor Jett, the speed runt) --- had alarmingly signed himself up for a 17:00-flat finish. So I gathered that, whereas DeWitt would be holding back and “tempo’n” the race at a pace that might outdo my very best effort, Jereamy might pull off a sub-17:00 finish (the other three Hall kids and their father weren’t nearly as ambitious … the next fastest projection was Josh at 18:30). The only thing I was certain about was that I wouldn’t be running alone in this race.

I did, however, seek solitude at the onset of the race with an outrageous opening lap split of 1:13. Believe it or not, this effort actually felt controlled --- though there was no denying that I was burning up my rocket fuel at an alarming rate. It was all part of my admittedly reckless race strategy, though. The idea was to hold to <5:20/1600 average for as long as humanly possible, with the aim to crack 5:20 for the 1600, hit the 2400 around 8:00, and then be under 11:00 with time to spare at the 3200. The end plan was basically that, assuming I make the 3200 <10:50 and then somehow pull off a 3^rd 1600 no slower than 5:30, I’d reach the 4800 by 16:20 and put myself in range of breaking 17:00. Alas I never could’ve anticipated how rapidly my pacing power would fizzle.

Though my 73-second set off was surely shocking to most of the field, I was not at all alone at the beginning. Trent Herzog was keeping pace with me --- from lane 3, sure enough! But he wasn’t even a participant in this 5000m heat. Rather he’d stated that he just wanted to get in a good mile in conjunction with the start of the race. Well I daresay he got more than he bargained for with the blistering blast off begat by me, and he called it quits after just 2 laps. And after that initial 800 is when the severity of my start started catching up to me grievously. I hit the 1200 in 4:00 flat, already falling off <1:20 a lap pace, and then arrived at the 1600 right at 5:25. Now, 5:25 is indeed on pace for a sub-17:00 5k, but the fact that I’d thundered forth so hard to achieve that split indicated that there was no chance of sustaining this pace. In other words, I was running essentially the same 5k I had 6 times (from Step By Step to Leapin’ Lizard … 17:05 at best on a short course, 18:17 at worst on a long course) in the previous year.

I was the first to round out four laps, yet by that point the hunt of Hall was well underway. DeWitt, just cruising along at what for him must’ve been like a hard steady state, was politely hanging about 10-15 seconds back, but Jereamy was bearing down on me mercilessly. And it was perhaps in the 5^th lap that he made his murderous move. Now, this could’ve gone down just like my disastrous defeat by Dowgiallo did in the 2010 track 5000m race. I could’ve just complacently allowed him to pull ahead and then watched with helpless resignation as his lead grew exponentially whilst I continued fading until ultimately finishing over 40 seconds after him --- as was the case back in 2010 with Joe. No! Never again. I tucked right in behind Jereamy, letting him take on the work load, and then I was back in front by the 3200. But there’d probably been a couple lead trade offs in between, with more to come.

I’ve never before felt like such a villain in a race. Yes, Jereamy had three brothers and his father in the race (it wasn’t long before we started lapping George Hall), but on the side lines were his mother, sister, and grandfather. Gramps was particularly vocal with his support for J. Halls --- and he had plenty of advice to offer Jereamy on how he should go about combating me and leaving me behind. At least I had my colleague Jeff Th offering me support by name whenever I lapped him (twice, to be specific). Anyway, I was in a world of weak misery. The temptation to take a DNF had been mounting since before the 2400, and I was seriously entertaining the idea of shooting for a sub-11:00 3200 and then calling it a day. Well completing 8 laps in 11:06 spoiled that notion, leaving me little recourse but to continue slogging through to the utter end.

I couldn’t possibly have downed enough water during the parching, burning, arid dry heat of the Leapin’ Lizards 5k. Yet one sip of water (handed out by Anna Staats) during this 5000m track race made me go, “Blech”. The not so hot yet insidiously muggy weather had a bizarre way of making hydrating nauseating. So, I was indeed feeling despicable. And I was starting to crack under the unremitting pressure of my dogfight with Jereamy. That’s ironic since, every time I passed him back I assumed that I, the veteran runner (running since before he was born!), would finally be getting into his head --- making him quail and want to give up already. Alas it was I who eventually couldn’t take the intensity of the competition any longer. While I made a couple remarks during the race and eventually couldn’t contain a few moans of fatigue, Jereamy remained stone cold silent and focused on the task at hand (not to mention his iron footing in lane 1, which forced me to all but straddle the line of lane 2 when drafting off his right shoulder for much of the race).

At the 4200 (10.5 laps) I was actually in the lead --- but then there was a premature bell ringing controversy to deal with, and whilst I tried to explain to the volunteers that there were in fact two whole laps left to run, not just one, Jereamy exploited the situation by sneaking ahead of me. But flash forward 400 meters ahead to the 4600 (the start of the true bell lap) and I’d somehow regained possession of the lead. I was in the most convenient position to win the race! Except then, in a bewildering flash, everything fell apart for me all at once. DeWitt, no longer interested in toying with us, finally “turned it on” and zoomed by us, probably knocking out his final lap in no more than 70 seconds. This of course was a devastating demoralization --- and Jereamy was again at the ready to exploit me being distracted. He took off after DeWitt, leaving my stunned in sudden 3^rd place. I was still going to finish out the final 400 of the race, of course, but my competitive spirit had been snapped and I had no motivation to try to outkick a speedy youngster.

Beginning the bell lap under 15:40 had been the goal, but I actually achieved 4600 around 16:03. At first this seemed dismally over pace goal --- until I realized that this put me in convenient range of sub-17:30. If only I’d recognized that <17:20 was also within reach! But I was delirious. The sun was suddenly shining through the clouds and into my eyes, and I was lapping so many people that I got confused over identifying who I’d just lapped and who might actually be catching up to me. In fact, believing that Josh Hall was gaining on me was about the one thing that compelled a kick out of me down the final stretch. And though the results would indicate that it was much closer, Jereamy appeared to have nigh 5 seconds on me in the concluding 100m. Then having a elbow on tricep bang up with a slow, burly fellow in the final 50 didn’t aid my sprint whatsoever.

Struggles and narrowly missed opportunities (missing out both on beating Jereamy and breaking 17:20 by just 3 seconds) aside, 17:22 does technically stand as my official 5k PR on an OFFICIAL course (12.5 laps on a track doesn’t get much more official). That 17:05 I ran at Young Life and that 17:06 I ran at HSMC Thanksgiving are both subject to intense scrutiny, and my previous best time on a certified 5k course was 17:36 at Step By Step. So I have to believe that 17:22 on a stinky summer evening bodes well for running … faster on a crisp November morning.

That was a fairly stacked 5k. Nice to have competition all around for a change. You guys did well.

I've always thought that we're very generous to try and give splits to competitors. I'd rather we did more combining of heats for expediency than separation of heats for splits. I think anyone who really cares about their splits will take their own. It's a unique service to offer runners and is a definite perk, but any runner who is really concerned about their splits should be able to do so with a digital wrist watch. When I'm a meet I'm always more concerned with figuring out when my start time is due to how many heats we're going to have or not; I'm not worried about whether my splits will be recorded accurately or at all.

You've absolutely got to be kidding me that it wasn't raining at Patuxent HS (none of Perry and Crystal's many log entries mention anything about precipitation). The track at SMR was submerged along the curves, and there was a tornado in Prince Frederick, for crying out loud (probably around the same time as the track events were taking place 20 minutes south in Lusby).

No results on the CBRC site? All I know is that Perry ran 5:15, and that Joe and Phil finished behind that --- and that they might've been the only three runners in the "race".

MTA:  apparently it was more of a water spout on the Patuxent River near the Benedict Bridge.

I thought I was coming in around high 5:17s. My watch says 5:18. Phil says 5:19. None of these times sound that great, but I think my previous time this year was 5:21. So that's an improvement.

My throat didn't burn as much after that race as it had in previous races, either. I think humidity may have actually helped in that regard, because after some of the races I know my throat was super dry. It started to drizzle right as our race was about to start. I wasn't sure if it was going to get better or worse. One lady commented that she heard there was a tornado nearby. That seemed hard to believe since there was no noteworthy wind. For the life of me I continue to not understand wind and tornadoes. Wind seems to be completely independent of cloud cover. Tornadoes just need clouds, but no wind?

Even though I had only a small warmup, I did it a little faster than usual and got in a few decent strides. This helped me start the race faster than I have been. I ran my first 400 in something like 1:14. I was leading Phil and Perry at this point. I did pretty well on the second lap. Then Perry decided to pass me on the third lap. I wanted to go faster, too, so I was worried passing me would effectively box me in. But I didn't have the energy to keep up with him entirely. I didn't get morally crushed, though, so that was a good thing. Phil then passed me. Darn it, all! I still wanted to go faster, though, so I tried to not let him go. I figured him passing me that early had to be more of a surge and not something he could maintain. Perry slowly pulled away. Phil pulled away and then evened out a bit. On the backstretch of the last lap I reeled Phil in a bit. If I had been feeling better I really should have just passed him by the curve and been done with it. But I guess I'm not in that kind of shape. I instead had to just hold on and hope that my kick would be better than his. I was the Leo Manzano of the day and managed to squeak into second with a strong final 100m.

Our times in the mile are so much slower than last year. I think Perry's results are the ones most worth examining, because his training has been the most consistent. Phil and I could be worse this year just because our training lately has been up and down. Perry has managed to come quite close to last year in the 3200, but not the mile. This says to me that the specific training we did last year for the mile helped prepare us much better for the event.

There were 10 people in the race.  Nobody else came close to breaking 6 minutes though, so among ourselves it felt like a three person race.

We watched the W200 final last night, and I misremembered -- AF did not pull away with 30m to go, like I had said. In fact, it looked like SAFP was leading going into and through part of the straight, and I think it was only in maybe the last 20m that AF pulled away. But, she did win in 21.88, which is a very good 200m time, I think, over SAFP at 22.09.

Crystal and I had been debating the times, because watching the men's 200 semis, Crystal had observed that the women are only a second behind them, the men being in the 20s and the women in the 21s (she said). I disputed that, and Crystal pointed out that I said Felix had run 21-something in the final. Later we saw the W200 final, and the truth turned out to be in-between: Felix ran in the 21s (high), but everyone else was in the 22s (low).

letsrun article essentially calling the W1500 results a triumph of doping: http://tinyurl.com/9ozjg6d