That is what I will call this – a rust buster. My last real race was in November of 2010. I paced the St. Jude Marathon this year, so December was a race free month.
This past Saturday, I “raced” the Mike Cody 4 mile classic. My last race of a similar distance to this was in early October, so I’m not callused to running at these speeds. Over the past few months, I’ve struggled with motivation and have only recently started doing some faster 1k repeats nearing 10k pace. Going into this race, I thought that I would run 24:00-24:30. I ended up comfortably running 24:23. To write “comfortably” when describing a race isn’t the first word that would come to mind, but I did feel at ease running this. I feel very strong at the moment, just not fast. I seemed to struggle with any faster than 6:00/mile pace. I never had that, “I don’t want to run anymore” feeling or “when is this pain going to end.” I guess you can say that I really didn’t race it. I was okay with the result and it gave me a gauge of current fitness level.
Josh McAdams won the race. Yes, he represented the USA in the 2008 3000m steeplechase. He is currently attending the optometry school here and races from time to time. He ran with our team, Pilgrimage Track Club, at last years 24 hour run. I spoke with him briefly before the race and he felt that sub 19:00 could happen. A few weeks ago, he ran a 4:01 mile in Arkansas. It was rather cold and windy on race day and he could only muster a 19:24. To his credit, it was quite windy and he basically ran a solo time trial, as no one is even in his class around here.
I am racing a 10k this weekend. I’ve always enjoyed this race, especially since they have a sweetheart division. My wife and I run it as a team and they avg. the times and ages. Last year, we won it. I typically don’t race much, but really want to do well at the Germantown half-marathon in mid-March. My motivation has grown, seeing all of the fast masters runners at the race on Saturday. I may even run another 10k at the end of this month and race my way into shape!
