Headed to the East Coast on Thursday, to race the Rothman 8K on Saturday an event associated with the Philadelphia Marathon. The plan was to fly into NYC at a decent hour on Thursday, meet our son who's in school there, and then take the train down to Philadelphia on Friday afternoon. Easy right? Well, the weather put a mess on that, and we ended up with an 18 hour trip, doubling the time, and didn't get to bed until 1:30 AM on Friday morning. So I was a little off all weekend.
The plan was to run 5:38/mile and attempt the American age group record--of which I just missed by 3 seconds earlier this year.
Running under 28:07 would require splits of below 5:39. The plan seemed doable.Easy, right?
Got lined up 2nd row, and everyone shot off the line. I was running 5:20 pace over the first bit and got swallowed up. Eased around the traffic circle at 1/3 mile or so, at 5:40-5:45 and felt good. My son was 10 m up. I hit 5:39 for the mile, and into a bit of a headwind now, on this out and back course. I tried to keep my turnover going, and in contact with a pack of runners so as not to run into the breeze. Worked really hard and was at 5:45 for the 2nd mile (11:24).
Then it fell apart.
Our group strung out, one or two pulled away and others fell back. So it was me and one guy, and 10 m up a tall woman. The wind was strongest in this stretch, maybe up to 10-15 mph. Felt I was going okay but at 3, just after the turn around, saw a split of 6:02 (17:27), and I knew the record was now far out of reach. Was still good get an 90% age grade and under 29 if I kept pushing. We were really strung out by then. Got past the tall woman, but the next guy up was 20 seconds ahead. Powered through mile 4 at 5:44 (~23:11). My stomach started bothering me at 4.5, and a 50+ masters guy caught me up a small hill with about 0.3 to go I tried to hang but he had a better kick. So mustered my way to the finish (5:48 pace for 0.97) in 28:55 (clock) - 28:56 (gun).
Not quite what I had wanted, but did run to a 90.1% age grade, and I don't take those for granted--any time I can do that it's still a very good day.
An AR would be rather nifty, but my training/recovery has been a little off for the past month. Just haven't felt quite right, and recovery after the Tulsa 15K last month was very slow. And then the travel this time was just brutal.
