The past 3 weeks, I’ve tried running with a different crowd but they leave at 5:30 so I’m always a minute or two late trying to get there from work.
This week I parked a few miles away and ran towards them so that I could actually get a run in with them, which worked out quite well as I got in a warmup lap and was able to line of up for the race.
The winning time in week 5 was a little quicker, with Noah Schoneberg running 16:52 for the win. The past couple of weeks were more consistent, with Matt Lane running 17:20 in week 6 and Ron Kelley running 17:21 this week. Times were very consistent on the women’s side of the race, with Emily Atwood running 20:01 in week 5 and Lily Childress running 20:17 and 20:13 for the wins in weeks 6 and 7.
I ran the race in week 5 as a fartlek, more or less. I somewhat randomly picked up the pace before settling back into what I had been running.
It was not an all out effort but I had to work harder than I did in week 4 for virtually the same time. That may have been because I had a little trouble breathing; I think there might have been something in the air that I might be a wee bit allergic to, so I tried breathing through my nose as much as possible.
Last week, I knew I was running too late from work to make it to run with the 5:30 crowd so I used the 5 miles from work to the race as a warm up.
Once there, I ditched my shoes at the starting line and ran the first 2 miles of the race with my wife as I tried to get her to push the pace a little.
After going over Tukey’s Bridge, I picked up some speed on the downhill (I’m not very good at slowing down w/o shoes on for the downhills since I haven’t got that nice cushiony heel to rely on) and I noticed that I was a bit of a ways ahead of Erin so I decided to pick up the pace and run about a minute per mile faster to finish.
It felt good. I need to try doing the full race barefoot soon, since the path is very friendly on shoe-less feet this year. I think that’s a combination of a lack of dumping fresh gravel the past few years plus that I’m just more used to running barefoot than I have been in years past.
Last night, I put in a pretty good effort for a tempo run/race.
I ran behind the lead pack for the first mile and then took off with only Ron following, who left me behind in a similar fashion at the second mile marker.
I never really saw anybody else. It was really humid last night, which was too bad as I thought it was raining out until I left my office. Being in a windowless room all day is a drag.
Now that the series is 6 weeks old, we have a leader board!
As of last week, there were 20 people who had run all 6 races and got to start out on the leader board. This week, the board has almost doubled in size with an additional 25 peopel who have only missed 1 race.
Dave Manz leads the board on both weeks, although he brought his average time from 18:23 down to 17:51 after dropping his pre-Vermont City Marathon run in week 3 out of his top 6 times. Heather Henningsen has led the women’s leader board both weeks, although her 24:39 last night wasn’t quite quick enough to improve on her 24:19 average pace for her first 6 races.
I debuted this week in 4th place with an average time of 19:26, a bit shy of 9 and a half minutes cumulative time behind the top of the leaderboard.
Photos: Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7
Full Results: Week 5 – Week 6 – Week 7
Stats: Leader Board – Complete Runner’s List
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