Friday, July 6, 2012

5 Mile Time Trial

Wednesday morning I celebrated our nation's birthday with a little five mile time trial in the streets of Minneapolis. I decided I didn't want to race all out--one, because I was running with Laura's number, and two, the heat index was like 150° at 6:30 AM. So, I decided I'd run at a solid effort, but not all out.

After a little warmup with Nate W., I made my way to the line. I was already really hot and sweaty and I was really glad it was going to be 5 and not 13.1 miles.


At the first water stop I was up with Nate and there was a couple of people behind us. Another pack was out ahead of us and I thought about trying to keep up with them, but decided to stick with my plan of running a hard effort but not going all out. As we got to the cups I had a little trouble getting water. The first two I went for I knocked out of the volunteers hands before finally getting one. One of the guys behind me yells, "Take one, man!"

"I'm trying," I said. Some people really don't think. Did he think I was trying to knock water cups down to sabotage his race?

"I'm not mad at you man," he said. "Just take one."

Later, Nate W. says, "He was mad."

Oh well. He hung with us for a little while and then fell off the pace so he was free to get water without me knocking down cups to keep it away from him.

Besides running a slow third mile, I ran pretty even splits. At the end there was one guy about 10 seconds ahead of me with about a quarter mile to go so I decided it was OK to push the pace and run it in hard. I was able to catch him and went across the line in 29:18, a second in front. I didn't have an official result as I wasn't wearing a chip.

It was a pretty good effort for a hot day. After a cool down, I enjoyed the rest of my day with some swimming, parade watching, and firework viewing with Laura and some friends.

I'm really looking forward to the weather cooling down and having some morning runs that are a little more pleasant. I'm feeling pretty good with the higher mileage, but would enjoy a little break from the heat.


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