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Apple Harvest 5k

October 6, 2019 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Ran a 5k this morning up in West Newbury, MA on the Merrimack River. I got a full night's sleep last night, but even so, my calves still felt tight as suspension cables when I awoke. Squeezed in a shorter-than-ideal warm-up, 6 short striders, abbreviated sprint drills, and leg swings between parking my car and the race going off. This was a low key road race, not a competitive club racing affair, and I was one in my race wearing a uniform. Plus, there was a simultaneous 5-miler which I suspect attracted many of the more experienced runners. All the better for me...

I told myself to go out conservatively because I was feeling sore in the hopes that the soreness would wear off as the race went. After all, there was nothing wrong with the rest of me above my calves. This strategy more or less paid off. I hung with another guy trading off second place to him near the end of the first mile which I came through in 5:53, a respectable start. The leader and the guy who passed me were not nearly as good at running the tangents as I was, so I definitely made up some ground on the curves by keeping my sights fixed on whatever tree or mailbox signified the shortest path. When I judged I was about a mile and a quarter in I started to pick up the pace and then was briefly distracted by leaf. I missed it, but when I looked up again the guy ahead was somehow closer than before. I kept reeling him in through the second mile, judging from my heavy breathing that I was giving just about the right effort for this point in the race. I opened up on a block-long downhill and found myself at the mile 2 mark having just a run a 5:32. Wow! I thought. I had no idea I'd sped up. Kept a good focus in mile three though kept putting off starting my final pickup (not the official kick, but the part where I just try to burn through all the aerobic reserves I have before going into sprint mode). I had planned ahead of time to have 2 1/2 mile mark (or where I remembered it being on the map) be the place where I set out to burn all my remaining energy and go into a seemingly unsustainable pace like I'd done at Lone Gull 2 weeks ago. But when I got to that spot I convinced myself to wait another 200m, at which point I saw big uphill ahead and found I wasn't quite ready to commit yet. The uphill ended with about 600m left and I almost instantly caught the guy in second and turned on the afterburners. It felt great. The guy in first suddenly looked catchable as well, so I set my sights on his back and went into overdrive as I neared telling myself I could win. He didn't look like he was sprinting, but he wasn't slowing down either and the gap he had on me (the same gap he'd had the last 2 1/2 miles) was not trivial. As I passed the 3-mile mark, I snatched a leaf out of the air and felt a jolt of confidence. I pictured the runners I hoped to inspire back at GDS and glory of coming in first and kicked...

I tried to kick, and I think I got to within one gear of where I should have been. But I know there was still yet an even higher gear that I failed to tap into, because I found that gear in my workout Thursday and in my last two non-relay races. Somewhere coming down the homestretch I lost focus though not confidence. He's coming back to me, he's coming back to me, I kept saying, but I didn't actively pull him back in as hard as I needed to. There's a pretty good chance I wouldn't have been able to catch the guy (for all I know HE still had another gear left), but I wish I'd made him fight for it. I crossed the line in what I judged to be about 2-5 seconds after him, having never really gotten close enough for the crowd to go nuts. I did squeeze under 18 though which is always satisfying, especially since my high school PR was 18:15. I'm very happy to have raced well and pushed myself like it was a race and not a tempo run or workout. Yes, I am whistful at what could have been... but I still got a little gift certificate for some unknown amount to a pizza place in rural Massachusetts at the award ceremony, which seems like an appropriate (if dinky) second-place prize. More importantly, on my cooldown, I caught 5 more leaves! That's 25 for the season, Nathaniel and Abby!