Notes
My policy this year has been only to write about races that are half marathon or longer, but will mention I ran the St. Patrick's Day 5K the week after running 3 Days of Syllamo and ran quite well at 18:41 and 11th overall. I did take it easier that week and only ran 37 miles. I signed up for the Sedalia Half Marathon so had 3 weeks out from Syllamo which I ran 2 track workouts plus mile intervals workout on a Saturday and have gotten my average mileage back into the 50s.
It has been unseasonably warm this year and the day of the half we started with temperatures in the 60s. I missed running the half last year since I had just started running again after back surgery the week of the half so I ran the 5K. I wasn't tapered for this half but still wanted to attempt my PR which was 1:23:51 two years ago. I started out running with Katie hoping I could keep up with her since she runs faster 5Ks than me. I noticed right away soreness in my legs running fast on the road but it got better after a few miles. We caught up to another guy in a green shirt and stayed close. The miles were close to goal but the pace felt tough to me for this early in the race.
About mile 6, I ran ahead of them and was in second. Ryan was way ahead. About at 6.5 miiles I notice both my calves are feeling sore. Legs were working fine so just hoping I could run through the pain and the hills weren't too bad or it wouldn't have been easy.. It was more just muscle soreness like I felt after Syllamo and I guess at this speed it made a reappearance. Eventually, the pain subsides and the guy we had run with earlier catches up to me. We pass back and forth for about 2.5 miles until mile 11.5. A young guy running his first half blows right past us like we are standing still. I speed up a little and then the calf soreness returns and green shirt guy passes me. A couple years ago when it was 32F on race day I finished this with faster average splits the last 2 miles, but I slowed down a little this time and ran them in 6:36.
Overall pace was 6:30 and time 1:25:33 and felt I really had to work for it and it was good I had some runners to actually push me or I may have given up sooner. Overall placed 4th and first place 40 - 49/masters and got one of the usual glass blocks. There were 161 runners. A fun trip too since we road tripped with friends and many others were there as well. We all went out to eat together after.