After spending all week traveling, I felt cautiously optimistic coming into the race today. As a few of the guys I run with have aptly noted, it's tough to gear up for a race where 1.) you know you're going to be whipped and 2.) you have no chance at running a personal best.
However, funny little surprises can happen by just jumping in a race and going all-out. It can be hard for a runner to game-up seriously for a race like this given that the results just aren't as quantifiable...
...unless your team pulls a rabbit out of its hat and wins the damn race. Then I'd say the day becomes pretty quantifiable.
As for my race individually, I went out way too fast, close to 3:00 for the first 1k. It was fast enough that if I'd simply held that pace, I would have had a good chance to win! This obviously wasn't in the cards today, so at about 1200m, I relaxed, and let some people go. By about 5k, I finally settled into a groove and stopped the bleeding of runners passing me. after the 6k mark, I starting roping people back in. This was actually my strategy all along, but said roping was limited by my stupid starting tactics.
As a result, I really don't think I ran to my potential today, but I at least had the sense of mind to take a deep breath and basically start my race over again. I don't think anyone passed me in the second half of the race that I didn't repass, so that's a moral victory. One of those runners was Scott "Slicko" Anderson both of the rival Pacers and old-school letsrun.com fame. Seeing him lit a fire under my butt when we passed me in the second half in the race because the guy has run a sub-4:00 mile. I wanted to be no where near this guy at the finish because his kick is certainly better than mine. Consequently, I started cranking the hills with a greater sense of urgency, making some moves, and trying vainly to catch teammate Kyle.
My strongest parts of the race were actually the uphills, which is where I seemed to gain the most ground on people and make my moves. The downhills, which are typically a strength for me, were not today because the biggest downhill on the course (also my favorite part of the course, today aside) was a mud-slick by the end of the race were apparently a ton of people fell. I almost fell twice, and on the last lap, I actually ended up in the bushes, but fortunately avoided crashing or falling too far into them.
I love running muddy races. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at them and tend to lose my patience. I am definitely a rhythm-type runner, and when the footing gets dicey, I don't run as well (partially because of my lack of legspeed, I think). The photos also reveal that I spent a lot of the race with my head down; I can partially attribute this to the loose footing, but personal history shows that I unconsciously look down when I'm not feeling well in a race (it's a lazy "tell" I have). Despite struggling at points, I think I made out OK, and it's something I look forward to improving, and today was better than similar races in the past.
Overall, I'd give the day a C+ for me on account of a dumb start and falling asleep for a couple of laps early on. I am glad to be racing again, however, and this race was a fine place to jump back into competing. Also, GRC is freakin' national champions. That feels cool, even if the team field was weaker than previous years. Here are the full results, as well as a detailed photo gallery from teammate Robert Jarrin, who took some excellent shots of the field this morning:
