3
My wife and I ran this in the early 90s. She got a top 10 overall and ran a PR there. I ran my very last PR ever at 33 on the Boilermaker course. So some history and good memories.
Traveled to NY meet our son who is starting his 3rd year of medical studies this summer, doing clinical rotations in upstate clinics. Great to see him and his girlfriend and to run around some in the lands of the Leatherstockings and Mohicans.
My goal was to really hammer this one and run 55 minutes or so. I felt pretty ready, although training has been down about 10% from the winter training cycle and much of last year. Just a lot of stuff going on, so I'm listening to my body. Nevertheless, had a solid block of training and averaged about 100 km/week over 2 months.
Race day was warm and humid (70 at the start, 88% humidity) and it warmed up some during the race when the sun came out.
Plan was for splits of 6:00-6:10 for 4 miles (climb about 280 ft) and then 5:50 or so to finish. Reality was 6:20 through 4 and 6:02 to finish at 6:10 pace (57:31).
Won the age group, and turns out that was 2nd best all time in the race's 42 year history. Also was 3rd best age graded masters on Sunda, behind a 4 time Olympian (Abdi) and a 45 year old Kenyan. The race has great crowd support and good logistics (downside being the race start is sort of a cluster, without enough portajohns, and a security bottleneck just to get into the start corral. But other than that, they nail it all pretty well. Best after race party at the Saranac brewery!
Recent Posts