Run to Win

This week last year was a busy one, with various news related posts and race results.

• The Back Cove 5k Race Series finished up, with Mike Caiazzo and Lindsey Davis taking the series honors. I won the last race, and placed 3^rd overall. This year, I bettered my average time by about a half of a minute, but none of the other top 5 ran this year other than Mark Goettel and he only ran a few of the races.
• The Portland Trails 10k was this weekend last year and was won by Mike Slinsky in 32:38, almost four minutes ahead of me. I got caught in the one place on the course that traffic could stop you by a guy with a moving trailer that wouldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Christin Doneski won the women’s race. The race this year is tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m., although I am not sure how they are going to handle trail closures.
• I added on to my icing series from a few months earlier by explaining how to ice sensitive areas on your body such as your eyes or testicles.
• I reviewed Breaking Away, a movie about cyclist in the 70s.
• This week two years ago, I pointed to some resources about deadlifting, namely a video on how not to deadlift and one on proper deadlift form.
• On the news front, New Jersey began testing kids for steroids in an attempt to catch them young. I also discussed it was worth paying for your baby to be admitted to a stadium or not.

The Portland Trails 10k, aka the Tukey Trot 10k, aka the Trail to Ale, was run this morning. It also played host to the Maine Senior Games. It was rather warm with temperatures near 90º, but a constant breeze kept the course feeling a little cooler. Michael Slinsky won the race in 32:38, followed by Jason Cakouros in 33:15. Christin Doneski won women’s race in 38:20.

Tom Ryan won the Maine Senior Games in 35:52, which was run as part of the same race. He finished almost 10 minutes of second place David Colby Young.
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Last night had some random notes about site improvements and a couple news notes along with talk about races, Barry Bonds.

• I talked about two races this week last year. The first was the Dan Cardillo 5k, which many people have been reading over the last week or two while looking for this year’s results. I also spoke about the Portland Trails 10k; this year’s race is tomorrow.
• Barry Bonds surprised me by actually playing in a game last year. It didn’t take long for him to start hitting home runs again.
• I linked to a video of how not to deadlift. There is also a link in there for the proper way to deadlift.
• From the football front, I discussed the melee between the Eagles and Falcons.

The Back Cove 5k race series came to an end tonight. There were 59 people at the final race, which was run in a cool 60° with some fierce wind coming over Tukey’s Bridge. Blaine Moore won the race in 17:25, with Shale Rosen half a minute back. Lindsey Davis won the women’s race in 19:46, followed a minute later by Emily Durgin.

The final leaderboard for the overall standings are as follows:

I want to extend a big thank you to the sponsors of 18 of my last 19 mid-week workouts. The Maine Running Company on Forest Avenue, Portland Trails, and Mizuno made this race series possible, along with all of the individuals who volunteered their time and effort every week for the last 5 months.

Update: Eric Boucher’s pictures of the Back Cove 5k

Today was the Portland Trails 10k. Two years ago, I placed fourth. Last year I lost by 2 minutes and placed second. This year I lost by a minute and a half and ran a minute slower than last year and placed 4th. The course is not overly inspiring; it runs along the Eastern Prom path and around the back bay and then along the eastern prom path in the other direction. I like it, though. There is no traffic, it is fairly quick, there is usually a fair number of people without overly crowding the course…

I probably should not have run. I think it may have weakened my immune system enough to let me catch whatever it is that the fiancé has been miserable with this past week. I went out in the first 5k exactly where I wanted to be (17:28) but then I cramped up and dropped back to running just over 36 minutes.

There was a new sponsor this year, the Shipyard Brewing Company. They changed the race slogan to “trail to ale”, and at the end of the race had pizza from the Portland Pie Company and Shipyard Export and Captain Eli’s Root Beer.

I did not care for the picture that they used on the awards this year though; the past two years was much nicer.