Notes
Raced the Walter Payton run, second year in a row I have done this. Even though it was a torrential down pour this morning, I never thought about changing my plans. I figured I would need to do a run today anyway so if I am going to run in this kind of rain, I might as well do it in a race and get a good effort out of it. There was also a small part of me that thought "Hey, maybe the really fast guys won't show up today." They did. Reggie and Zach were there so we warmed up outside at a rare moment when the rain was a bit lighter. After 12 minutes of running, my hamstring still felt good so I felt good about running today. I had the free massage people work on it though before the gun went off. There was a 5K race run at the same time as the 9.5, when a bunch of guys went out pretty aggressively, I was hoping a majority of them would be 5Kers. But when we all passed the 5K, the guy right behind me was the guy who won that race. I felt good in the first mile, but the 2-6 miles were pretty rough. I was fighting a cramp that came on anytime I pushed it. And, my hamstring was throwing off my stride a little bit. At a couple points, I thought about stepping off and calling it a day, but I kept pushing and my leg started to loosen up and my cramp starting slowly drifting away. It sucked because I couldn't really "race," it was more of a tempo effort. At mile 7, Reggie was still in my sight and within striking distance. i knew I wouldn't lose my position, but couldn't really muster up a strong enough effort to catch him. The mile markers on the course were way off, but after measuring the overall distance, that was accurate. I had one mile at 6:21 and another at 4:43. But the ones that seemed legit were right around 5:45 with my 9th mile being at 5:35.
Good news, I ran a solid effort and didn't feel that tired at the end, at least not the way you should for a race. It was disappointing that I wasn't at full strength in the race because I'm getting in good shape. The rain didn't seem to slow us down too much, there was only a couple points where we stepped in puddles and the wind was pretty calm. The race was better organized than last year, but they still need to have accurate mile markers, I mean, that's a no brainer when putting on a race.