Notes
Easy two mile warm up mostly on the nature trail as the Bees were racing. I felt pretty good after two miles, so I put spikes on and did a few strides and stretched before the race.
I made sure not to stress myself out about the race, and planned on an easy 5:20 to 5:30 first mile, knowing I’d probably race better if I could work my way up the whole time. I came through at 5:18, a little faster than I’d planned on, but I felt pretty relaxed. I tried to work harder through the second mile, passing people the whole time. I guess I still slowed down, since I came through two miles in 10:48, so 5:30 for the second mile. The third mile hurt, although not the most pain I’ve felt in a race. I kept passing people, but at that point it was pretty thin so it took me a while to pick each person off. I saw Marcelo about 50m ahead of me with a quarter mile left and really hesitated to run him down. I thought to myself, do I really need to do this? I’m already hurting, and it’ll probably be a decent race anyway. I decided with about 100m left to go and get him, and I actually had more left than I thought. I busted out a pretty good kick and got him right at the line, which felt good. 16:15.1 finish. Not bad at all.
I’m really happy that I can still race decently off of very relaxed and informal training. I’ve had a lot of fun running this summer, and I think I’ll just stick with that through the fall. No formal workouts, not too many races, just trying to stay healthy, get my mileage back into the 50s every week, and having fun.