Notes
It was a fun first post-collegiate road race. The start was interesting. Part of the field was led down the wrong street for a ways, so we had to turn around and backtrack onto the actual race course. I didn't care too much except that it was annoying having to weave through the whole rest of the field to catch back up the leaders, which didn't take as long as I thought it would.
Once Rebel and I caught back up to Pollux and Sherpa, we stayed together until we reached Twin Springs. Pollux and Sherpa got onto the trail first followed by Rebel and I. Rebel slowed down quite a bit on the trail, which at the time I thought was a ploy for Pollux and Sherpa to get some distance on me, but I later found out that Rebel's hamstring wasn't feeling the greatest. Regardless, Sherpa and Pollux had a large lead on me when we got off the trails. I picked up the pace a bit comfortably enough to catch up to them by the time we reached the end of the camp ground.
Once I reunited with Pollux and Sherpa, I ran with them for about a mile most of the way down 5th Ave, but my legs wanted to go a little faster, so I slowly started increasing the pace without thinking much about it. After we crossed the dike onto Ice Cave Road I realized that they were no longer with me, so I held that pace for the rest of the race. I will admit that with about 2 miles to go on lower Palisades I looked over my shoulder to see if the guys were rolling me up. I knew that their race strategy often involves a very patient start with some wicked fast miles to close, so I was a bit nervous. As I looked over my should down the long gravel road, I could not see anyone, but I still didn't doubt Pollux's miler speed!
At that point in the race my legs still felt good enough where I had a few gears if I needed them, but I didn't really want to speed up that much. Especially when I got onto the time for about the last kilometer. After running most of the race on hard paved roads, running on grass felt like the slowest thing in the world! My legs were already getting tired, but my breathing was still fine and controlled (there was no facial distortions on my part in this race). My legs are definitely sore, but I think it had more to do with running so many miles in flats on paved roads than with how hard I was running. Overall, I think this was a good test of my legs for running longer distances and I look forward to adding a few more miles in the Madison Mini-Marathon (half-marathon) in a few weeks!