Notes
Qualified for D3 New Englands.
Thoughts and a recap:
1) Warmed up an hour beforehand with 20 minutes of running and then hurdle drills. Wore warmups until about 2 minutes before starting.
2) The weather was horrid for the spectators and fantastic for the runners. I ended up starting with my hat and gloves, shucked the hat on lap 5 or 6, and then shucked the gloves on the back stretch of lap 8 or 9. My arms were cold, but not hurting from it. Overall, it was pretty nice for a run.
3) I started off in the lead partly to check Josh and Rob's pace and partly so that I would go with them for slightly longer. I lead for about 700 meters and then stepped out to let them tuck by. Then I dropped in and gave it a whirl. They started pulling away about 4 laps in, but I stepped up the pace and was running about 30 meters back for about 12 laps.
4) I split the 5K at 16:47-48, which I would like to point out is the second-fastest 5K I've ever run.
5) 4 second positive split, but that's well within what I can pull off.
6) At one mile to go, I saw a time of 28:20. At that point, I was hurting, but still pulling. Rob and Josh were about 150 meters ahead and I was just clicking people off the list. Coach was helping by calling most of the splits, but not every one, which kept me varying the pace. I was also doing some of the math as I saw the clock.
7) I was trying to conserve my passing as much as possible. I think I had one pass where I managed to stay in lane one and cleanly go around.
8) The wind started picking up with about 7 to go, so I started exaggerating my arm swings to hold pace a bit.
9) The finishing kick sucked so hard. With 400 to go, I saw a time of 32:25 or thereabouts. At that point, I was happy with where I was was. At 300, coach told me to catch the next person, so I surged which basically turned into the final kick. With about 60 meters to go, I realized that I had 10 seconds to hit 33:40. That was the desperation sprint. It was ugly and loud.
10) As I came across the line, I saw the clock hit 33:40, maybe 33:41, so I wasn't sure if I had gotten it. I knew that if I had missed it, I was maybe a second off.
11) Overall, this was probably one of my best races ever. A solid 3/4 semi-solo, a 2:04.05 PR (5 FREAKING SECONDS A LAP- I just did that math), and now I've dropped my 10K time, in three races, from a 37:08 to a 33:39, a 209 second drop. In less than a year.