Greenway Memor Miler

This is definitely what you would call a last minute decision, as evidenced by all the work I did leading up to it. In other words, I would never recommend running a fairly hard 13 miler a couple days before a ten mile race, and through Thursday I was actually on pace to have one of my highest weekly mileage totals in quite a while. In fact, even though I was dreading the thought of doing it by myself in the rain, I headed to work Friday with every intention of doing a long steady state workout that afternoon. The wheels started turning that morning though and I began to consider bailing on the workout and jumping in the race. Some people like running in the rain, but I don’t. In fact, I hate it. Therefore my reasoning was pretty simple. Doing the race would give me an excuse to dodge the rain by going short that afternoon and would also give me a nice, flat course to do the workout on the next morning. I figured I would also have some company and therefore a little extra incentive to run hard. The only drawback was the temptation to go harder than a steady state, something I convinced myself I could keep under control.

So, I took care of my entry during lunch on Friday and got ready to go from there. I got up to rainy skies and warm, humid conditions Saturday morning, anything but ideal for a long race. However, by the time we got to Roanoke, I could tell the threat of rain was minimal. We would definitely have to deal with warm temps and sticky conditions though, as well as some slick spots on the greenway, especially where there were wet leaves. Andrew was running the accompanying four miler, so he and I headed out for a warm-up a little more than half an hour before race time. I felt a little sluggish but not too bad overall. My main observation was how much I was sweating from just an easy jog. It was definitely on the warm/humid side. Upon getting back, I changed into a brand new pair of Brooks ST4 Racers (yes, I said brand new, which I know is a rookie mistake) and headed to the line.

The gun fired pretty much on time and I quickly found myself way behind the lead two in the four miler (including Andrew, the eventual winner, who took the race out in 5:00 flat I would later learn) and well ahead of everyone else. The goal going in was to run right around 6 min pace, so I tried to settle in to a comfortably hard effort and wait to get a split. I hit the mile in right at 5:30 and obviously knew at that point that I was out way faster than planned. It felt very smooth and easy though, so I made a snap decision to just go with it for a while and see what happened. From there I proceeded to run 5:40’s all the way through 6 miles, hitting the halfway mark in 28:16. Coming in to this, 6 miles was about the longest up-tempo workout I’d done, and just past that point I started to feel it. Up to that point it had really been pretty easy, but now I would have to make a decision: dig in and stay on pace or back off. It was a pretty easy decision considering the goal, so I eased off a little and slowed down. From there on I ran in the 5:50’s to the line. Miles six to eight felt decent, but somewhere between eight and nine, the pace and the conditions caught up to me and I pretty much lost my legs. The last mile was a bit of a struggle, but I held it together enough to cross the line in 57:17, taking the overall win in the process. I put in a 3.5 mile cooldown and called it a day.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the way things went. I definitely got in a little more than a true steady state workout, but at the same time I never got out of control or too far out of my comfort zone. There was never a point in the race that I couldn’t have picked up the pace fairly significantly had I needed to. It would have definitely hurt towards the end, but I could have done it. It was a very solid workout and another step in the right direction, although I may have undone some of the benefit at the Red Palace Chinese Buffet afterward – ha, ha. I also seem to have come out of it without any real soreness or other problems, which is always a good sign. I’m still light years from where I want to be, but these are the sorts of things that will help me get there and also give me some hope that eventually I will. Plus, I’m having fun again and really appreciating just being healthy!

Results are here and below are a few pics. The first is a little past mile 9; the second is rounding the turn just before the finish; and the final one is me and Andrew with our awards afterward. We didn’t get huge trophies this go round, but back-to-back weekend sweeps was cool!