Notes
This was super fun! Got there a little later than planned and had to cram the warmup so I basically did 12 minutes jogging, leg swings and some standard starting line jumps. First quarter was around 5:10 pace so I made a point of slowing down and came through the mile in probably 6th ish in 5:40 with Dave and Jake, Matt ahead of us in the lead pack for our wave. The second mile had some lumps and bumps and actually one short, steep hill plus some winding turns on rooty footing, so it was a smooth 6:02. I started pressing a hair toward the end of that mile to reel some guys in and probably passed 5 dudes, some quite a bit older than me who might have overseeded themselves? I'm not sure how the waves were put together. I pushed to catch up to Matt and his pack and got there fairly easily. I figured I would bide my time a little and hang in the back. Matt noticed me after maybe a minute and had a bit of an "oh shit" cross his face and he took off not long after. It felt early but I figured I would go after him because I was thinking he would be a good guy to chase and MAYBE I could challenge him at the end, although I wasn't sure it would go in my favor. The idea was exciting though. I went with him and was definitely hurting doing it, but before long I was feeling like I had to move now or never as the turn to the finish came into view. I pulled up next to him and he responded but after maybe 5-10 seconds he fell back, and not long after that I could hear him breathing and hard and falling further back. I coasted in at the same effort (which was pretty hard for sure) and saw 17:15 as I crossed the line and 16:30.6 on my watch. It ended up as 16:30 in the results, and my watch says my final 0.96 was at 5 minute pace.
I've been rereading Running with the Buffaloes this week and I took some of Wetmore's early season racing advice by staying nice and aerobic until the final mile and I think it paid off big time, amplified by the downhill and Matt acting as a bit of a carrot. This left me feeling really good about how training is going right now because I haven't been working out to get ready for anything like this. I probably only tough 5 minute pace in strides these days and that's totally fine. I felt strong and my achilles and ankle held up very well which might have been the best part of this whole thing. It's been a while since I had this much to say about a race!
Today was just Matt, Dave, Avery and myself because the governor announced more COVID trail restrictions last night, specifically adding NH to the quarantine-after-travel-list. I feel like this was done very safely and I was fine with going, but this almost definitely qualifies as breaking those rules because I'm not quite quarantining these days, even if I'm close to it only going to Mom/Dad/Liz/Brian+MH's these days. COVID is the worst it has been yet in the US and it feels like this winter is going to be a shit show.