So the question is did Crystal and you both register for Western States?

Nice run. Good use of whiskey. Bad showing at Denny's.

How do you both feel now that muscle soreness may have move beyond the everything stage and into the specific ailment stage?

I'll tell you what; I'll do Prediction if you'll wait for me to do a shot of something at the halfway point - you can pick what

Phil passed Katie in the last 6mi somewhere.

It looks like she definitely had issues in the final 10k. Either she came with an injurious issue or she just hit a major and atypical wall (if the race had gone well for her she surely would've been close to the 3-hour mark).

Perry and Crystal--are you recovered from the 50 miler yet?

I am awaiting results for DR,  Joe, and Emily from the 5K.

Thanksgiving Prediction Run and 5k

23 November 2013

I did this as a workout, but it was done at 100% race effort. I intended to come into it even more fatigued than I was, but some damp weather the day before restricted me from putting in as much mileage as I had hoped the day before (I think I ran just over a mile, walked some, and then sped away in my car as the rain became thick). This may have led to me being almost as rested as for a goal 5k, except I wasn't in bed until after 11pm. What I'm trying to say is that I prepared for it only as well as any hard workout done at 9am on a Saturday. Jingle Bell was the only race I cared to improve for by the end of the year, but I did know that the Thanksgiving course likely presented a faster course.

Emily had gone for a walk on Friday and had some idea in the back of her head that she might try to run the 5k the next day if she felt up to it. She had not run regularly since the end of the summer. Two shows in a row plus the onset of cold weather took away months of running and made returning to it not very inviting. She may have run just once or twice per month from October through November. So, she went into the race well rested and with no aches or pains!

I gave Emily a hard time when leaving the house for not dressing warmly enough. She thought she'd be fine. I said that she would be fine during the run, yes, but was not adequately dressed for standing around in the cold after the race. Then right before the race started I had to implore her to take off one layer. I felt like I was being a major nag and probably stressing her out unfairly, but at the end of the day she told me I was right several times, which I'm documenting on the record. I also recommended she start about 2/3 of the way back. This naturally led to several runners around her bolting out the gate. Emily decided not to do that, though, and just went her pace right from the start, which led to her running down several people in the first mile and then later. Probably my favorite story from Emily is about a girl in front of her holding an iPhone and wearing ear buds at the start of the race. The girl's phone slipped out of her hand right at the start of the race and dropped to the pavement. Several runners had to careen around her as she picked it up and it caused mayhem for people starting around Emily.

I lined up on the starting line, though, and did not need to worry about runners in front of me causing a problem. There is a starting line photo on Facebook that I find somewhat enjoyable. It shows approximately five people on the start line. They are overall runners 1, 2, 3, 4, and female 1. Essentially, the main runners to get on the start line knew to get themselves there. Pretty impressive instincts by those individuals. Hearing that David Strickland was not allowed to race made it fairly obvious on the start line that DR would win. I overheard somebody (family?) joke to Don Balcom that he had to win the race or wouldn't get a ride home. I smiled to myself thinking he might not be getting a ride home. The other contender on the start line was wearing no shirt, stars and stripes racing shorts, and pink spikeless spikes. I was not intimidated by him going shirtless or wearing those shorts, but I did take notice of him selecting the Nike Zoom Victory for a road race. He meant business.

We basically went out the gate 1,2, 3,4, and 5 except for one other younger guy who contended for maybe the first quarter to half mile. DR again did not bolt out the gate, but instead started only a few seconds ahead of pace. I was fairly content to sit in about 5th as we turned onto the paved road. The others seemed to be flagging a bit after the initial start and Travis Priest and I were eager to keep our pace and let them fall back since we had been a little more conservative. He and I moved to the front of the chase pack after drafting them for just a moment and we tried to keep the pace honest. This worked out pretty well until about the mile and then the freedom shorts and Balcom asserted themselves a bit. I let them gap me by a few meters and this is probably where I lost the race to them. Shortly after the turnaround I started looking for Emily in the crowd and I don't think I lost too much focus, but after cheering Emily as she passed a couple of minutes later I realized that the guys in 2nd and 3rd place were actually going to be very painful to catch.

I still had Travis Priest right there with me, but I decided I had to start going for the other guys now if I had any chance to beat them. There was just over a mile left and I knew that gaining 5 seconds for 3rd and maybe 10 seconds for 2nd would not be easy over just the course of a mile. I dropped Travis almost immediately and I was so focused on catching the guy in front of me that I did a good job of never really paying attention to what was behind me. I assumed this Balcom guy was more distance oriented than speed oriented, so I knew the drive to the finish would be much harder than the sprint, so really I just wanted to catch him with enough time left to beat him in a sprint. He made this very difficult. I struggled to gain just a few feet on him before turning back onto the dirt road, so this was like almost an entire mile where I really exerted to put myself back in the race and I was only reeling this guy in by minor amounts. Once we hit the dirt road I really tried to pick it up to catch him, but didn't want to sprint to catch him and then just get dusted by him when I choked and he decided to sprint for the actual finish. I gained on him a lot, but he never became complacent. I ran what I thought was a great 3rd mile, but freedom shorts probably ran his mile as fast and so he easily got 2nd and Balcom ran strongly enough that I couldn't catch him well enough to make it a sprint. I think if there had been no crowd I would have just sprinted from over 100m out knowing full well his later timed sprint would leave me in the dust when the finish actually neared. I didn't want the crowd to see him beat me in the sprint, so I couldn't bring myself to risk such embarrassment by sprinting so far back on the dirt road. I'm annoyed with myself for not going all-in on running this guy down, but in my defense I was already going so fast that I knew sprinting then was going to destroy any chance of sprinting in the last 50m.

I finished 4th. I wasn't too happy about it. I also figured Balcom was in my age group, but I believe he turned 40 this year, which why I was able to nab 1st in the age group. It's not like I'm 60, though. I'm in the open age range. I may as well have been 4th in my age group.

I congratulated a few people at the finish line, grabbed two cookies and a water, and then started walking out to cheer on Emily where the pavement turns back to dirt for the finishing straight. She turned onto the dirt road just before I could reach the end. I couldn't easily tell her time, but I knew it was in the 30s. I was guessing she was about 36 minutes based on the time of day. Thanks to Tamara starting the race late, though, she actually finished in the 33s! I think the course is short, so you could argue she should be more like 34 minutes, but she did start toward the back of the pack, which buys her a few more seconds back in the favorable direction. She was pretty happy with 33 minutes, as she says she never walked. She was able to go at a smart pace to prevent herself from tiring in the middle of the race. She was pretty proud of herself. It's pretty much a life accomplishment for her. The upside to not running much going into the race is that you feel fresh for it. The downside is that your muscles ache like crazy after it since you aren't used to running.

I was initially really happy at the finish of the race with my time, though. The clock read something like 18:35, which meant a pace that was a hair sub-6. That excitement abated some when I saw my watch read 3.05, which isn't quite close enough to 5k for me to feel very good about it. I noticed they moved the start/finish line up even closer this year, so I was hoping they pushed the turnaround even further back, but it seems they did not. I didn't even really run tangents this year. Tamara said to run facing traffic and I never crossed the yellow center line to take a tangent more directly than that. If the course was close to 5k, then I can be really happy with that time. If it's short of 5k, though, then I'm not sure I actually improved at all!!! So I don't know what to make of the result.

On to Jingle Bell! I thought I could make a noteworthy improvement by then and I think my training has been going well enough, but now I'm uncertain I can do much in the next two weeks to guarantee it. I primarily say this because of the weather. The previous few days have been unfavorable (except for the race weather) and this week so far has been crap for serious running. The cold is going to make it difficult for me to put in serious training these next few important days.

MTA: The official results DR posted were literally not posted yet when I started typing this, but then when I finished I see his post preceded mine with the official results I was unable to find. Bah!

Looks like Liza RD took care of it this year:

 

http://www.cbrcmd.org/results/2013_11_23_tg_overall.htm

 

http://www.cbrcmd.org/results/2013_11_23_tg_age_group.htm

Finish line recording was Crystal, Suzanne, Kelly, and Tamara.

Interpreting results was Liza & I - and Crystal helped.

Results were bad - a lot of bandits or people crossing twice, so reliability goes down after the first 20 or so.