Well, that's a wrap on my first complete season with college running in the rear view mirror. It was about 50 degrees this morning, which is extremely warm weather for this time of year, but it was also windy and for some reason I felt very cold. Felt pretty slow during my warm up. I knew I wouldn't be fast today so I pre-planned to just draft off of Danny while I could. I felt sort of bad about being his shadow, but I knew I wasn't going to compete with him today. Came through mile 1 in 4:58 and that felt tiring. Soon I let him go. The course is a pretty flat out and back. I could tell people were behind me, and at the turnaround was bummed to see ~5 guys within striking distance. I kept rolling, but got passed by one guy on the way back. Pretty dissapointing to know I was running so far under my abilities. After he passed me though, he kind of hung around, and I was able to speed things up the last mile and surprise myself by holding on for 2nd place which had been my goal. Splits: 4:58, 5:04, 5:12, 5:09, 5:13, 5:48 (1.2 miles). Honestly, I shouldn't be too bummed. If you look at my workouts from last week, this really is about as good as I could realistically hope for with how I feel. I should respect marathon recovery. One kind of funny thing is that this was deja vu where Danny won the race and I was competing against a Mill City runner for 2nd. Let me tell you, that is not fun lol. 1/2 of Minneapolis are fans of Danny and the other 1/2 are hardcore Mill City people. Just like Get in Gear, I had lots of people (including runners, since it was an out and back) cheering for the other guy to beat me. It was also reminiscent of my marathon where I was clearly playing as the "away team". Hahaha. Maybe I should join Mill City.
2023 Racing Stats:
70+ miles total
Finishes: 2nd, 1st, 15th, 1st, 2nd, 2nd
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