Seventy miles two weeks ago with some good tempo miles in there. Felt the effects last week and cut the mileage to 40ish. Knob blog was hacked last week. Sold, bought and moved houses the last couple of days. Final 10k trail race on Sunday morning.
A repost of an email race report:
Conditions were nice and humid, legs are dead from moving and running too much. plan was just to take it easy and hold on to 2nd place in the series. i had like a 1:40 lead over third place.
So the start is on a road, not a trail, and people just take off flying. i’m quickly back in like 6th place, then we hit the single-track trail and i’m stuck behind a guy who went out at 5:30 pace and is now doing 7:30 pace. i’m behind this guy for a long time. the top 3 guys have disappeared.
Finally get around him and see third place in front of me. david grice, he’s also in 3rd overall for the series, so i just have to stay within 1:40 of him to beat him. we come to the aid station, which is 2.5 miles in at about 16:25 which is like 6:30 pace, which really seems too fast for me on a trail race. anyway, i take some water, round the corner, go down a hill, look at my watch … and … down … i … fall … in … slow … motion …. a hard fall too, like i’m sliding into third base.
I scramble up and can’t see grice anymore. but about 20 seconds later Gate Davis comes running up. Gate is the overall leader and has won each race by at least 2 minutes. as he passes he says, “wrong turn”, and i’m sure he must be talking about me. i guess when i fell i missed a turn and that’s why i can’t see grice anymore. so i cuss and bitch and start jogging in. geez, not again!
I’m jogging for about a minute when the 5th place guy comes running up. he says, “what’s wrong?” and i say, “i took a wrong turn” and he says, “no you didn’t, gate took the wrong turn.” really!? oh crap! i better start racing again. between the fall and the jogging i’ve probably lost a minute and a half to grice.
So i really pick it up on the last half, and on one of the switchbacks i think i see grice, which gets me moving even more. i finally do see him at the finish, where i think he only beats me by 40 seconds or so. my final time is 41:05 or something (6:36 pace?), so if you account for the lost 1:30-2 minutes, i had a pretty good race.
I thought the course was on par with the Loop, maybe tougher, because it had a couple of really long, hard uphills. one was basically wilke with loose rocks and limestone step-ups. i might as welll have walked up i was going so slow. on the other hand, there was a fair bit of downhills and flat straights. whatever, it was hard.
So i was 4th overall today, but i still wasn’t positive i held on to second for the series. but i showed up for the award ceremony at the rogue store tonight, and did get 2nd for the series, something like 10 minutes behind gate and a minute ahead of grice. got a nice metal object that says “ROGUE” in big letters.
My body is bruised and battered from the fall. didn’t notice while i was running, but as soon as i finished my knee started swelling and is pretty stiff. probably won’t be doing much running for a few days.
Back to the blog: knee still hurts, tired from moving, no running this week, I feel fat and unmotivated. Summer of? Inconsistency?
