Ran the USA masters 8K road championships this weekend. Good race conditions at Virginia Beach, temps cool in low 30s at the start but only a light breeze. The course is about as flat as you can get. All the big name runners in my age group were there. I was a bit nervous, and in the pre-race write up USATF had me as the favorite but with equivocation.
Start was frantic and congested because it's a mass start with 8000 runners and an older teammate got knocked down and broke his hip. I was 4th at the mile (we wear back bibs that identified age group). Moved to 2nd at 1.5 and hung 5 m behind the leader until 3. I decided to surge and see what happened. He stuck with me for a bit but his footsteps faded as I caught a group of younger runners. Just hang on with these guys!Which is what I managed to do.
28:10 chip time and 28:12 gun. 2nd guy was 8 sec back. They use gun as official. The American record is 28:07 by Norm Green, chasing his footsteps again. Came to win and that's the big thing. Next up a little marathon out east and then some recovery.
