This was a 10K I ran in Pittsburgh. Things went well, but not completely as I would have liked. Here's what I thought of it in 1997:

The drive to Pittsburgh was pretty easy. I got on the road at 8:00am and headed down to Indianapolis, IN and then to Wheeling, VW and then to Pittsburgh, PA. I made it to the packet pickup and expos at 4:15pm. It wouldn't have been so close but there was a lot of construction on I-70 and then even more on I-279 into Pittsburgh. I sat in one lane stop and go traffic for about a half an hour.

When I finally made it to the expos just before it closed I found that my number was 50. I was excited, thinking that I was the 50th best runner. Then I figured that my last name was the 50th highest in the alphabetical order of people who were seeded and who had registered early. But I was still excited.

The t-shirt long sleeve number this year that sucks. Next I made a quick to the Power Bar table to ask why they don't make chocolate Power Gel. The guy didn't know so I slapped him around. Then the Power Ade station to get a few quick cups down. Next stop was a clothing table were I picked up two singlets because it was a deal and because I had forgotten a singlet for the race.

The final item on the agenda was getting a hotel room. I headed to the University of Pittsburgh campus and the Best Western I stayed at last year. No luck this year, they were filled up. Same with the Hampton Inn. The third time was a charm and I stayed at a Holiday Inn next to the tall building near the campus of Carnegie Mellon. The area was nice and I ran about three miles to loosen up and stretch out. I also picked up some stuff to eat and drink. Then I hung out in my room planning for the race and watching "That Thing You Do" and the movie about teenage witches on HBO.

During the movies I planned my strategy for the race. I had my splits from last year and the course hill profile, so I knew what I needed to run. A 5:35 first mile, mile two at 11:00, mile three in 16:50, mile four at 22:25, mile five in 28:20, mile six at 33:50 and the final time of 34:55 for the race. My plan was to run a few seconds faster each mile and run a 5:55 instead of a 6:10 for mile five. Also I memorized the splits to have something to concentrate on. Around 11:00pm I tried to get to sleep, but I didn't drop off until after midnight.

The alarm went off at 6:30 am the next morning. I got up right away and took care of the calls of nature and then dressed for the race. By now it was 6:55am and the race didn't start until 9:30am, so I went back to sleep for about half an hour. After that nice little nap I headed out towards the start. My plan was to be the same as last year. Get to the start early, park there, warmup and stretch out and then run a fast race.

Everything was going according to plan. I got to the start with no problem and even parked in about the same spot as last year. After quick trip to the port-o-potties I headed back to my car to listen to the radio and work on memorizing my goal splits for the race. About half and hour later I went for an 18 minute warm up jog over the same route as last year. Then I headed towards the start to stretch out and try to relax. Twenty minutes later I headed into the seeded runner's area and got in line for the port-o-potties. The line moved quickly and in no time I was in and out. For the rest of the time until the start I jogged around the warmup area. Just before the start I put on my racing flats and dropped off my gear and headed into the starting crowd. I felt good, but the weather seemed a bit warm, creeping up near the 70's and the sky was bright and sunny. An announcer on a loud speaker claimed that the weather was perfect. I disagreed, hoping for an over cast day in the mid-50's with a tail wind. That would have been perfect weather.

Picking a spot up front and to the right I saw a big muscular bald guy who could have been no one else by Paul Dunleavy. Paul and I have had a fierce rivalry going back to our first awesome showdown at the 100th Boston Marathon. We'd started in the same bin, having similar qualification times, and he was the only guy there who I was sure who could bench press more than me. He took off quickly that day, but I caught him at mile 25 and put him away. Last year at the 19th Great Race we met at the race expos and Paul vowed revenge. Okay so he didn't really, but it makes a better story if he did. He fell four seconds short that day, but today he again vowed to defeat me in as demeaning a manner as possible. Okay, so again he really didn't say anything of the sort, but it could have happened. What did happen was that I saw him in the crowd, but it was too close to the start of the race for me to say anything to him.

The gun went off and I went out with the crowd, trying to run fast, but not over do it. As fate would have it Paul ended up directly in front of me but was going a bit slower than I wanted to run. With an easy stride I passed him and never looked back. The initial downhill start of the race gave way to a minor incline which took a bit out of my legs and my pace. The hill was short and after a few hundred yards we were back on a decline and I pressed. I felt okay, but not tremendous. My planned first mile was a 5:35 which was five seconds faster than last year's split. Pressing hard I hoped a good start would be a good omen for the race.

When the first mile rolled around the time was 5:40, exactly the same time as last year. That didn't bode well for the race, but the next mile was a steeper downhill, so I pressed harder hoping to get back some of that time. My plan called for a 5:25 mile which would put me at 11:00 for the two mile split. As we moved towards downtown Pittsburgh down Forbes Avenue I held my place in the race pretty well. I wasn't passing anyone, but no one was catching me. I felt like I was flying on the downhills, but my legs were sore with some pain in my hamstrings and the back and sides of my knees.

The mile two split came up fast, 11:05. Five seconds behind my goal, but the second mile had been a 5:25 which was exactly what I'd hoped to run. All I had to do was keep things going for a little more than four more miles and I'd set a new personal record (PR). The downhills made me confident, but I knew there was an up hill on the fifth mile that had crushed me last year. If I could do okay on that I'd be in good shape.

Mile three was down Fifth Avenue and right by the Holiday Inn I was staying at. I wasn't feeling as good as I'd hoped and the thought of turning into the hotel parking lot crossed my mind for a micro-second. The next three and a half miles weren't really exciting me and people were starting to catch me. I was slowing down and getting passed at a steady rate. Not a lot of people but about one per minute would catch me and pass by. By the end of the third mile the time was 17:03, two seconds faster than last year but I'd just run a 5:58 mile instead of the 5:50 that my plan had called for and two seconds slower than last year's 5:56. At the time I couldn't calculate the split, but I knew I was 13 seconds off of the pace I'd hoped to set. Now I was out of it and just holding on.

I still had some hope of setting a PR with the downhills coming up. Mile four was a nice big decline so I wasn't too upset. Pressing I tried to stay with some of the runners who were passing me. Each one I could manage to go along with for a while, but I'd fall back eventually and they'd move away. Mile four was slow in coming and arrived at 22:55, 30 seconds slower than my race plan. I'd just run a 5:52 mile instead of my goal of 5:35 and slower than last years 5:39. My mind wasn't all there, I knew I was slow, but I wasn't sure how bad things were. All I could think about was the 100 foot up hill climb on mile five. If I could suck it up and run under last year's pathetic 6:10 for that mile, I could get back in the race.

The rise started and I pushed hard. The crowd as thin, but runners were still going by me and I hadn't caught anyone in a long time. My legs felt heavy and I was really sucking air. I knew I was in bad shape as far as the pace was concerned and I was feeling bad too. Still I was moving along and there was always the last big downhill to make up some time. Maybe I was putting too much faith in my downhill ability. The 101rst Boston Marathon had gone well for me on the downhills and I thought that was a strength. Up hills were another matter. After pressing as hard as I could mile five came in at 29:05, 45 seconds slower that my goal of 28:20 and I'd just put in a less that stellar 6:10 mile, the same as last year.

For some reason though I thought I was in decent shape time wise. I actually thought I could set a PR and run under the 35:35 I'd finished in last year. Looking back on it now I see that that would have required a 6:30 for the final 1.2 miles, a 5:25 pace. Not totally out of the question, but definitely not something that was going to be easy after running the first five miles at a 5:49 pace. But my goal called for a 5:30 mile and last year I'd run a 5:37, so there was an outside chance I'd manage to set a new PR. My goal of sub-35:00 was gone, but I could still salvage a good race.

Unfortunately when I should have been working my hardest, I ended up sucking the most! With a huge downhill into Pittsburgh I managed to run a tremendous 5:50 mile. Mile six came at 34:55 and I knew it was all over. I'd held my place over the last mile, but I hadn't overtaken anyone. I'd run 20 seconds slower than my plan and 13 seconds slower than last year. I wasn't even going to break 36 minutes now.

Demoralized and exhausted I ran the last 0.2 miles at just under a six minute per mile pace. A stupendous way to finish a race that I faded from the start. There was no kick left in me and two guys sprinted past me. The sole bright spot was that I hadn't seen Paul pass me. I finished the race in 36:06.53, the third fastest 10K I've run and a big disappointment that day. A guy just in front of me threw up in the finishers shoots. This was a nice way to point out that while I'd worked hard, I wasn't yuking, so I could have worked harder.

While getting some water and Power Ade I saw Paul Dunleavy and talked to him. He hadn't been training much and had run about a minute slower that I had. Small solace to beat him when he wasn't really in racing shape, but at that point I was taking what I could get. I spent the next half hour walking around the finish area drinking and eating and writing down my splits with a "you suck" comment for the last three. The first half was okay, but I really lost it over the last three miles. This doesn't bode well for the Chicago Marathon in a month.

Or does it? The last year or so I've run really slow races before the marathon and run them well. Maybe I'll run even faster this year because I've been running so slowly in my tune up races. Over the ten weeks prior to the race I've averaged 67 miles a week compared to 64 miles a week for the equivalent period for my 1997 Boston Marathon training and 62 miles a week for the same period in my 1996 Chicago Marathon training. I hope all the extra miles have given me dead legs and a good taper will help to a PR in Chicago.

Then there's the heat factor. If it was hotter then the average time would increase. If I could only do a statistical analysis on the data for the first 400 or so men who ran in both last year's and this year's race . . .

A few minutes at Alta Vista and I came up with the results I wanted for 1996 and 1997 from the fine folks at Runner's High. Then about and hour filtering the data into a format that I could work with and I found the following.

Figure 1 shows the results for plotting the average 1996 time on the X-axis versus the average 1997 time on the Y-axis. The blue boxes are the average coordinates while the blue error bars represent the error on the mean for those measurements. The solid blue line shows the best fit to the data points and is a cubic. The dashed green line shows the results for runners with the same finishing times both years. The filled red circle shows my results from both years. There are 407 runners and their times from 1996 and 1996 included in this analysis. From this analysis it appears that there was some slowing down on average for runners around my ability, though my slowing down was a bit more severe than the average. The cubic fit predicts a 35:47, about 20 seconds faster than my actual time. So, so what?

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