November 27

AM: Gobble Jog 5k, 16:03, 2nd place, 10 miles

I woke up this morning with my back and hamstrings still unbelievably sore. In retrospect, I may have been a little too enthusiastic with both a workout and a crazy gym session on Tuesday. Oh well...there wasn't anything I could do about it at this point. I wasn't too worked up about it: I came here with Josh and Valerie hoping more than anything to dip my toe back into racing. Though my time wasn't all that hot and only slightly better than last year, I did compete well.

The weather was perfect, however, with temperatures in the upper 40s. At the start, I recognized one guy, Ryan Emery, who won this race last year. I planned to hang onto him as long as I possibly could, but given that he ran 15-flat here last year on a course that's relatively slow, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

When the gun went off, I fell behind Emery and two other younger guys (who I'm assuming weren't wearing chips since they weren't in the results). They started moving away from me after the first hill, but I used the downhills to maintain the gap. I came through the mile in 4:55, which may have been a little slow, and I was about 5 seconds back from second. Emery was cruising, and by the time I figured out where he was up ahead, he was long gone.

The second, toughest mile had a series of hills. I started putting in surges to try to close the gap. At one hill, the guy in second started coming back, and I moved along with the third guy to pass him. I drove up the longest hill in the race right around 2 miles, jumping into second. In the straight, last mile, I just tried to hold off the guys behind me.

I still need more speedwork, because my second and third miles were the same (5:15). Even with the hills, that's too much of a discrepancy from my first. I have plenty of work to do, but it's nice to be back nonetheless.