I'm writing this about a two and a half weeks late. Two reasons:
1) A bit of disappointment in the result, and no desire to revisit it.
2) I've been sick ever since. I don't know if I had the cold going in, and that's why things fell apart, or if I was immuno-suppressed post-race and caught the cold that day, but it's been fifteen days of "hit by a truck". I've been feeling a bit better, but every time I try to start running again, I fall back into the pit for a day or two. I'm not sure how the season will pan out for the rest of the Fall.
The race was scheduled for 8:15am. At 6am, it was 24 degrees and humid. Given my physiology, this probably wasn't going to go really well. I've found this summer (like previous), I overheat at high intensity pretty easily, and pace can drop precipitously.
Warm-up was running the course, and even at an easy pace, I had a pretty good sweat by the time I got back. The course was an out-and-back, mostly flat, with the only climb of note leading to the turnaround. With good conditions, it would definitely be a fast course.
With the gun, I settled into a decent position near the top 10, then picked off the folks who had started way too fast. The first few kilometers went smoothly, pretty much hitting the targets. And then it ended. I was holding the gap to the runner in front of me (who I later found out was a member of the national women's pentathlon team), who I guess was struggling as much as I was. The last 2k were a struggle to even remain at sub-4 pace, and as we reached the finish stretch, I could muster nothing of a sprint. All in all, a pretty miserable race that seemed to be going pretty well about 8 minutes earlier.
Official results:
19:21 (3:53/km avg), 8th OA/3rd AG
Sunday, July 17, 2011
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