Notes
SEMO Track and Field team, along with Missouri Running Company of Cape Girardeau put on their inaugural Indoor All-Comer's Meet at the Student Rec Center indoor facility. I am told there were over 250 people pre-registered and awaiting the final competitor tally. Looks like a successfull debut and hopefully they will decide to put together some additional racing events.
I have never competed indoors or on a small indoor track so two first's for me. The 3K runners are thrown together so the Old Men are running with the young bucks today. We are three deep at the start and I take my place in the third row on the inside in order to stay out of harm's way for the first lap or so. I thought we would be running 15 laps in lane 3 - We end up running 17.5 laps in the inside lane.
Start off a little conservative on the first lap then start to crank it up some. There are about 10 HS guys ahead of me and, from the beginning, it is obvious a pack of 4-5 guys would be front-running. My goal is to hold them off and not get lapped until deeper into the race; I know they will lap me but want to keep the damage to a minimum. I think I held the leaders off until lap 12 then 5-6 of them blew by me.
Overall, began the race well. Cranked it up to what I considered 3K pace from lap 2 to around lap 11 then felt myself slow to approx 5K race pace and couldn't get out of that groove. As I think about it, really unable to maintain a full-out race pace below 5K effort due to the tight turns slowing the momentum down. End up finishing 10:22.
CBEM co-founders hold our own in this race then Bram goes back for some additional 800m punishment later in the day.
Summary: Good day with PR at the distance due to first attempt. I was able to go sub 10:25 on 8-10K training and with less than ideal events earlier in the week. Nothing seems to be broken/harmed from the event although can tell my ankles/lower legs will be sore from the tight turns today. CBEM begins the 2013 season well and looking forward to seeing what we can do in February.