Notes
I had a pretty good race. The wind wasn't a huge factor, I ran pretty even splits over the course. Watch had me running 13.2 miles. Scored as 5th man on the team. My left calf and right hamstring felt tweaked a few times, but not too bad and never for more than 5 seconds or so. I was pretty sore after the drive home, but a good rub down from Erin before going to bed seemed to work wonders.
Copy & Paste time:
We got there pretty early, so we got off the highway and drove the last 3/4 of the course. Coming around the point at 9, we got to see a lot of flags pointing back without a crease in them, so had the race been at 9:30 it would have been a lot worse I think.
All in all, I was pretty happy with my race. I ran relatively even splits most of the race, and wasn't too set back by the wind after the turn around. The pack I was running in broke up right before then, so I wound up running that stretch alone pretty much. I ran with Molly Taber for most of the race, and she had had a bit of a lead here. I offered to break the wind for her, but went by at about 5:40 pace so she decided not to take advantage of it. She kicked herself at the end, though, because I wound up running the time she was aiming for.
I said before the race I would run between 75-77 minutes, and ran 76:31. The sad part was that I wound up scoring for my team, when I should have been the insurance man. One of our top guys fell apart and I caught him around 10 or 11; he was about 15 seconds behind me at the finish. Had he run what he's capable of, our team would have been second place. Had he run even a bit over 6 minutes faster, we'd have had 3rd place. As such, we were 30 seconds behind 4th place. $100 is better than nothing, so between that and the team paying for me going down at least I saw a small positive return today (I made $25.) Makes me luckier than most I guess.
The race is a bit of a hike to get down to. Took us 3 hours from Portland. A couple of my teammates came from further away. One guy was from Bar Harbor (an additional 2 hours or so) and another from Presque Isle up next to Canada, so he had not only the 3 hours from Portland, and the 2+ hours to Bar Harbor, but also another 2 1/2 hours on top of that. Long drive home...
I'll post a link to my race write up tonight after I've had a chance to actually write it and upload my running info. Between warm ups and the race, I've logged more miles this week than I've run since graduating college. Should be in the 71-72 mile range, and I still feel strong, so hopefully no injuries around the corner. Looking forward to next week's cut back week, though. I'm due.