Notes
Didn't know what to expect for this one. I have been pretty inconsistent as of late. But I felt relatively good and it was really awesome having all the RPI peeps here. Got to race with Brian and Colin, and Matt, Jaime and Ben were also here! Since Colin and Brian were here my plan was to basically stick with them as long as possible. It ended up working quite well. Colin Brian and I were pretty much together for most of the first mile. Brian and I moved a tad ahead as we got to the mile and beyond. In the woods at probably 1.25 I was feeling pretty good so I decided to speed up a bit. I passed Brian, got around the corner, and saw a large hill. Nope, throttling back. Brian passed me back and I stayed on his tail best I could. As we got to the top of the hill and the weird turnaround at the aqueduct Brian started inching ahead and broke away with another pack. I felt like I was getting faster as the race went on but could never quite reel Brian in.
Once I got out of the woods and onto the field, around wherever 2 miles was, I stopped feeling like I was accelerating. As I progressed through the 3rd mile it became harder to maintain. The last field loop was a struggle and I got passed by a fair number of people. In the grand scheme of things I didn't end up slowing down too much, and I ended up with a pretty respectable finish.
It was a slow course for everyone so I am happy with my time, considering a couple things. One is that looking back at the Greater Boston meet, I ran essentially the same time (17:27 vs 17:30) on a much slower course. The second thing is my performance despite my recent inconsistency. I think I'll credit this to both my decent base and to how I have been a lot less stressed for the most part in the last week or two. Having the job thing settled has really been a sigh of relief.
Speaking of, the end is coming quite soon. Only 3 more days of work! Then next Monday it will be on to new adventures. With that hand in hand with increased running consistency things are looking up for the near future.