Notes
Wasnt sure what to expect going into this race. Knee was hurting all week and hadnt really tested any speed since the injury. Felt better this morning, so decided I would attempt to go at race pace and hope for the best.
Started out with Keefe over the first few miles and kept the pace pretty relaxed. Lost sight of Keefe on the hill during the third mile and figured he was close behind. We had worked together for the first few miles and was hoping we could push each other for a good pace. Unfortunately found out later he had to drop due to some GI issues. It's too bad, I think he was primed for a good race.
Hills during mile 3 took a little out of me and as a matter of fact, the first few miles were a little slower off pace than I would have preferred. Didnt want to go out too fast, so didnt worry too much about it. Figured I could make up some ground during the middle downhill/flat miles.
Spent the middle part of the course looking for groups to run with or spring ahead to join. Felt good enough for a few quick miles around 5:30 pace and was hoping I wasnt setting myself to blow up by being too aggressive. Felt pretty comfortable rolling through the first 9 miles.
Made a move before we made the turn at the far end of the water around the 10 mile mark (beat my Jones PR from 3 weeks earlier by over a minute) and broke from the my current group. Was thinking to myself how warm things felt in the sun and turned out to be a pretty nice day. Sure enough as we made the turn, I realized that I made my breakaway either too early or too late as I hit a pretty good headwind and was out in it solo. Figures, I run with the pack during the tailwind and have nobody going into the wind. At this point my only options were to plow ahead alone or ease up and let the pack catch me. I opted to make a push towards the other group out ahead which meant quite a bit of time solo taking a beating from the wind. This really took a lot out of me, but made up some good ground on the group up ahead, including on Quintal, who was certainly not himself today.
Spent the last few miles picking off a few runners one-by-one, and made a good push up the last hill. Had nothing by the time we came to the last finishing straightaway, but still scored a PR at 1:14:16.
Would have loved to break 1:14, but nonetheless still pretty happy with my time today. Still hit 84 miles for the week, guess I could have tapered a little more.
SRR finished 10th in the team scoring. Crazy how fast this race is. I think once we get a full team and the team gets healthy, we're primed for some good team scores. On the Women's side, Larissa took 3rd place overall, which is just amazing.
10. Somerville Road Runners
1:12:11 1:12:20 1:14:20 1:16:41 1:20:56 (1:21:08) (1:21:53) = 6:16:28
JACOB BARNETT 27 M, GREGORY PICKLESIMER 46 M, CHRISTOPHER KLUCZNIK 30
M, SEAN MCDONOUGH 30 M, BRADLEY HARRIS 35 M, RYAN KERRIGAN 32 M, BRIAN
CULLINAN 32 M