Steamboat

I ran the Steamboat 4 mile this weekend in Peoria and I must say that I performed at about the level I thought I was going to.

I got up the morning of the race, ate a banana and jogged a mile at my Dad's house before the two of us headed downtown. When we got there I jogged another mile or so and hit the porta-potties. I lined up about midway between the 6:00 and 7:00 pace signs and waited for the gun to go off in the 69 degree heat and 79% humidity.

When the gun went off I moved with the crowd and didn't try to weave and bob through traffic until about 2:00 into the race. I figured waiting that long saved me some energy and kept me from tripping all over people. At the two minute mark I started surging trying to get on pace because I had a bad feeling that I wasn't going to hit the mile mark in 6:40, let alone 6:30 like I wanted. When I crossed the first mile mark I hit my split and saw that I had run a 6:29.89. I felt pretty good and in control and since the crowd was thinning out I focused on slowly moving up and passing people. At about the mile and a half point I thought I saw Joy G. a few seconds ahead of me but figured I must be on crack because Joy always smokes me. When I saw Carl B. right beside her a little later I figured I would surge up there and take look. It turns out I was right and when I came up on Joy at the two mile mark I passed through in 12:53.32 with a mile split of 6:23.43.

Joy must not have wanted to run with me because she surged very hard after we passed through the water stop and I never saw her again. I knew heading into the race that mile three was going to be a make or break mile and I focused on not losing ground on the people ahead of me and passing the people who looked like they were hurting more than I was. I'm not exactly sure what my three mile time was because I hit my split at the banner instead of the marker and I think I was about 5 seconds slower than my actual split. I passed three in 19:21.30 with a 6:27.98 mile. If you add the five seconds that puts me at 19:26 and 6:32. The reason I think I hit my three mile split early is because I took my split at 5k and saw that I had run the intervening .1 in 52.71 seconds for a 5k time of 20:14.01. Maybe it did take me 52 seconds to get there but I don't think it did. Passing through the three mile mark gave me a bit of a second wind because I knew that if I could make it to the 3.5 mark the last 800 was downhill. I passed my friend Rick a little after 5k and started to increase my turnover so I had a good head of steam, no pun intended, built up for the downhill.

When I finally hit the downhill I actually only passed four or five more people I think. I was starting to hurt at that point and was just hoping that the race would finish soon. I crossed the line in 25:45.27, by my watch, with a mile split of 6:23.97. Official results give me a time of 25:44 with a placing of 179th overall out of 2,267.

I was able to run my race in negative splits, barely, by covering the last two in 12:51.95. I finished 12 seconds behind Joy and it makes me wonder what could have happened if I had gone with her. I come to the conclusion that I would have crashed and burned and I'm glad I ran my own race.

I felt strong and steady through the race except for mile three when I hit a bit of a rut. I had to keep reminding myself to relax my arms and shoulders the whole race because I could feel them wanting to migrate to my ears. I could have run a little faster, especially if I had really let myself go on the final downhill. A sprint of that magnitude would have resulted in emesis covering my racing flats and only a drop in time of a few seconds. Maybe next week at Scholastic.

I ended up covering 31 miles this week which makes me all the more happy with my race. I ran some good, strong workouts this past week and was still able to run a pretty good time.

Today is my 29th birthday but we're not doing anything because my wife is sick and I'm not feeling too well either. I think my problem is sleep deprivation. I left work early today and took two naps of about 3 hours each today. I think I'm ready for bed though. Kim and Nathan got me some hazelnut coffee, gift certificates to Best Buy and Barnes and Noble and Wilco's newest CD for my birthday so I am pretty stoked about all that. For Father's Day they got me a new man-purse for work and a "force-field" button that plays the Star Wars theme.