Notes
STEEPLECHASE
First steeplechase since 2016! Battle Road Twilight Meet #3, regretted not racing the steeplechase here last year so decided I had to go for it despite my reservations. Minimal hurdling practice going in (jogged a few laps with one hurdle three weeks ago and did 4x200 over two hurdles this week), overall flexibility is low and fitness is not that high... but still had fun. Thankfully neither the back nor ankle pain that has plagued me this week was really present tonight. Expectations weren't super high and I was thinking that to run 10:0x would be pretty good, although I was secretly hoping to break 10...
Pre-race wasn't great, forgot to bring caffeine and like the 5k last year I almost missed the start of the race! Got my spikes on & picked up my hip number while they were putting the barriers on the track... still, went right into 2nd from the start and was running pretty comfortably. Really unevenly over the barriers, on some of them I was really smooth and on some I stuttered and lost lots of momentum... nothing too surprising there. Water barriers went pretty well, I remembered that I had to accelerate into them and I'd say that about 5/7 of them were solid. I really did feel like my hurdling improved from the start of the race to the end... didn't really get splits during the race and obviously was hard to calculate them from the clock, but after a fast first lap I think I was probably slower than 10' pace for most of the race. Had a good last lap when 4th place passed me and I followed him back past another guy into 3rd place again. Never really had the confidence to kick until I got over the last water barrier, and overall my confidence throughout the race was never super high. If I could race this again in a few days I think I could do a fair bit better just with a better warmup and more confidence going over the barriers (+ better sense of pacing?)
Maybe I will see if I can get another opportunity to steeple this summer, I think even without competition I could run much better than this - after all, my PB did come from a race where I ran alone the entire time. If nothing else, I plan on coming back and doing this again next year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRW_HRd6YpM&list=PLSZxfTHoN_vroL6jJwpCpNEKV8XodBvM-&index=18&t=0s