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The Boys are back!

September 8, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Today I had three major accomplishments:

1. I convinced my high school teammate Rob Savitsky to get up at 8am on a Sunday morning, drive out the exurbs, and run his first cross country race since 2002 with me.

2. I beat a guy in the final sprint

3. I ate ice cream three times.

These are ordered from most impressive to least.

I'd had a hunger to run a real cross country race, on dirt trails through forests and meadows, for over a week now. Road races are all well and good, but there's nothing quite like a true cross country course and the nostalgia and excitement it brings. Who better to share it with than one of my best friends from high school, Rob, who used to be about my speed though he always thought of himself first and foremost as a sprinter (or at times, a basketball player). Rob and I always talk track time and team memories whenever we see each other, but our actually runs together have been few a far between (I can recall exactly one instance since college). He likes to grip about how slow and out of shape he is, and recently I have too, so that made us a good team. Still, convincing him to actually come out and do a race on a day's notice was nothing short of miraculous. I'm told his girlfriend helped.

We got to the course, parked, and registered with about 15 minutes to spare. That wasn't nearly enough time for a course walk of course, but we inspected the map and jogged about a quarter of a mile down it to see where the first and second loops split from one another. The race was set in a state part around 3 concentric loops that overlapped near the start and finish lines: a 1k, 1.5k, and 2.5k approximately. Although this sounds like the opposite order you would want psychologically with the loops getting longer each time, it did help ensure that people would not lap each other unless someone were to finish in literally half the time of someone else. The terrain was mostly flat but with several steep rolling hills in the final mile. There were a also some rocky sections, hairpin turns, and other classic cross country features. The important thing was that you could never see more than 100m ahead of you and it was almost entirely in the shade. Now that's what I call a good course!

Turns out that the only people who do cross country after college are runners who are pretty serious about it. Unlike a typical Sunday morning road race where most of the participants are folks getting in shape or who run a few times a week, pretty much everyone in the race except Rob was wearing a running club uniform. To make matters more intense, there was a separate women's race and a separate "Master's" race for those over 40, meaning that we would inevitably be near the back of the pack. As it happened I finished 47th (18:46) and Rob 63rd (23:13) our of the 66 participants. The winning men's time was 16:02 and winning woman just under 19 minutes. Most of the runners had the kinda grizzled look to them like they'd been off in the woods a long time and this was their special obscure hobby no one else understood.

My race was decently-paced for the most part. I think I split a 5:50, 5:59, and 6:20, but I'm not sure exactly. I felt like I was holding back the right amount in the first mile, and I moved up through the race, constantly hunting people down and never getting passed. The third mile was hillier and had rougher footing, but I feel like I took it pretty aggressively. Hard to know sometimes if you're giving the proper effort, because you remember previous races being much more painful but you're not sure how much of that was just feeling miserable about yourself and how much was physical pain that can bed used to judge how hard you're pushing. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say I did the first mile exactly right and miles 2 and 3 I could have a given a bit more. There was a point in the second half of the race where I noticed myself stuck in a pace the felt inevitable and I managed to consciously wake myself up from it and say, no, this is not the only gear you have, you can run faster than this. Then I closed in some guys a little bit ahead of me and that provided the motivation to power me through the next several minutes.

I am very proud of how I sprinted at the end. There was a guy who looked hopelessly far ahead whom I managed to walk down in the final straight. If he had cared a bit more or been a bit more aware of his surroundings he easily could have beat me, but he just kept running at the same pace and didn't seem to be aware of my presence until I squeezed by him within a meter of the finish line.

After the race, everyone got free pie!