This was a local 8K I ran. It turned out to be a race that I didn't do quite as well as I had hoped. Here's what I thought of it in 1996:

Sunday morning my alarm went off at 6:00am. I hit the snooze bar until 6:30am. This was my first mistake. When I finally got out of bed I drank my Anabolic Activator III banana-cream-flavor-grape-fruit-orange-juice shake that had been prepared the evening before. In addition I ate an entire bagel. By 6:45am I was finished with my usual modest breakfast. For a while now I've been eating this before running and lifting in the morning and then eating again just afterwards.

After breakfast I gathered my things in my new Boston Marathon gym bag and headed towards the CoRec and my destiny. The weather was foggy and humid. When I drove past the bank, the temperature was 69F. At 7:30am I was parking in the rear of the building an quickly exiting my car. My second mistake. I had hoped to be there an hour early with plenty of time to relax and get loose.

A quick jog around the parking lot and then to the registration booth would be the first part of my warm-up. There was no problem with my number and I had all the safety pins I would need, a pleasant change from the Boston Marathon, where I had only three pins. I'm sure the drag from the number bib cost me several minutes.

With my number attached I did another few minutes of jogging and then some stretching. By now it was 7:50am and time to put on my racing flats. After a jog back to the car I shed my warm-ups (a long sleeve t-shirt and some baggy shorts) and got into the racing flats. They felt pretty good, but my feet sort of hurt while doing some striders in them. This was not unexpected since it was the the first time in about six months that I had worn the racing flats.

On my last strider in the parking lot, I saw Rob Davies, who was there to run his first CoRec 8K. He looked in good spirits in spite of the early hour. During the striders I felt light and fast and hoped for the best.

As we made our way to the start line I headed to the front while Rob headed to the middle of the pack. In front I looked around for fast looking guys. There were a few, but none who were really intimidating. A local guy who runs in the Ironman Triathlon guy was there. I'd seen him at a lot of races around the area. He came over to me and said "Hello Dave."

Shaking his hand I told him I wasn't Dave (a friend of mine who is much faster than me, but can't bench press nearly as much as I can) Haushalter and that he had graduated and left for Eugene, OR. We talked for a while, but since I wasn't Dave, he wasn't so interested. As the starting time neared, I made my way to the right portion of the start since the first turn would be to the right.

When the gun went off we surged forward. The lead guy wasn't pressing the pace too much, nor was anyone else. We were content to take it out rather slowly, so the bulk of the crowd was still on our heels as we rounded the first turn a few hundred meters down the road. At the turn things thinned out a bit. I was in second but the leader wasn't moving fast enough. I took the inside part of the turn. For a second I pressed into the lead just to get things moving, but the leader responded and we took off. We started stringing the group out as we rounded the next turn about a half-mile into the race.

By now there was a ten to twenty yard gap between me and the guy in first. Just before the first mile marker we started up a hill and I got passed by one guy. At the first mile my time was right at 5:30, just the pace I had hoped to set. I felt good and happy that I hadn't gone out too fast and that we'd been going up hill and I'd still run a 5:30. This was a mistake. I slowed down a bit thinking I should get into a nice pace since I was on my goal.

Two other guys paced me about a half mile later, but I wasn't too concerned. I figured I was holding my pace and didn't care about anything else. When we got to the second mile I found I was mistaken. My split was 11:30, so I'd just run a six minute mile and my pace was 5:45. For some reason I didn't respond to that. I was pushing hard and breathing hard and didn't know if I could go much faster. With that thought two more guys passed me and now I was in seventh place and felt like I was slowing even more. One of these guys was the Ironman guy and he told me I was looking good as he ran past.

As we made our way towards the turn around point I caught one guy and was now in sixth place. I could still see the leader so he wasn't that far ahead. We were all about 20-50 yards apart. When we got to the turn around loop the leader had just exited it as I entered. The loop was bigger than I remembered from last year. As we came out of the turn around I caught one more guy. Things weren't right though.

I wasn't attacking the course or really working to catch the guy. I was sure he'd pass me just as soon as I got in front of him. I was breathing hard and working to keep my pace, but wasn't really moving at a good clip. Just after I got out of the turn around loop I saw Rob Davies. He was looking pretty good.

On the first long straight away back towards the finish I passed the three mile mark at 17:30. I suck! Another six minute mile and my pace was down to 5:50 per mile. Now my mind was starting to fill with the excuse list. Let's see, it was sort of hot, in the 70's anyway, and really humid, in the mid to high 90%'s, it was sunny, I had been running too much, didn't get enough rest this week, hadn't run enough speed workouts, the weather was too cool for training and now too hot for racing. What else? Yeah, the course was longer that had to be it. The turn around loop was much bigger.

Of course all this did wonders for my concentration and confidence. I did manage to hold my place in the race and wasn't so far off the leader. I could still see him as he turned the corner and started back to the CoRec. But I was laboring and breathing hard. My feet felt good though, but my legs felt heavy.

Nowhere could I manage to push harder. When I turned the corner for the last mile and a half I should have kicked a little since it was the beginning, albeit slightly, of the down hill. But I was still sucking and sucking air. Mile four came at 23:45! Great! An amazing 6:15 mile and my pace was 5:56.25! What did all those big mileage weeks do anyway? Make me slower? I suck! As usual, as a race goes on my ability to do mathematics was deteriorating. I couldn't figure out what I needed to do in order to break 30 minutes. Now it's easy to see that I needed to run the last 0.96 miles in 6:15, but I'm glad I didn't know that then.

The up hill during the first mile was now a nice down hill, but there was still a lot or race left. I managed to press a little bit, but I heard footsteps. Even with footsteps I couldn't get motivated. I wasn't going to make my goal and that had been clear since the second mile. Now I wasn't even going to set a PR. I held the guy off for about another half mile before almost letting him pass.

Rounding the final corner I couldn't see the clock and didn't want to look at my watch. People were in the way of the clock and that pissed me off. When they finally got out of the way I could see the second part of the clock and saw the numbers change to :00, so maybe it was 28:00. Nope, I crossed at 29:12.06 in sixth place over all and first in the 25-34 age group (I got a winner's certificate and a $10.00 off coupon at "Sports Etc.") with a 5:53.24 pace.

The Ironman guy got third. Not too shabby considering two weeks ago he ran the Canadian Ironman. He talked to me a little after the race even though I wasn't Dave. He still assumed I usually beat him. After I told him that it was the other way around he decided I wasn't worth talking to anymore and left. What really happened was that his daughter was finishing the race and he wanted to see her.

The winner only ran a 27:41. So that either means that it was a hard weather day and everyone ran slowly, or that there weren't a lot of good people there and I could have finished second if I hadn't been running with my head up my ass; which, as you can imagine, is very difficult.

Looking back on it, it seems that my last 0.96 miles was at a 5:41 pace, only ten seconds slower than my first mile. So even with the weather it seems like I could have run faster, but just slowed down too much on the middle three miles. I do think that the high mileage weeks and lack of speed work hurt me.

I've been blowing off the striders at the end of runs, my tempo runs were long, like 25 minutes hard five off, or just 50 minutes hard and no ~800m repeats other than the one workout last week. My workouts have been hard and long, but not too fast. Plus I did run 62, 72, 82 and 50 miles the four weeks before the race with only one day, the Saturday before the race, of no running. This might have hurt the most as I've been really tired lately and my legs never really come all the way back. Still one 8K isn't that much of a sacrifice if I can run a 2:45 in Chicago.

When the race results came out I checked last years time with this years results. The general trend I saw was a 40-60 second slow down from last year to this. The guy who beat me this year by two seconds, beat me last year by two seconds and beat me last spring in the Math-Science 10K by a few seconds. All of this leads me to believe that I didn't do quite as poorly as I had initially thought. Actually if you account for the average slowing down of the pace of the entire crowd from last year to this (as a result of the weather probably) then I'm doing pretty well considering that I'm putting in many more miles this year.

All in all it wasn't such a bad race and I'm not too down about it. I did finish higher than ever in that race, last year I was 15th and 11th the year before. Plus it's my second best time at the distance in spite of all of my excuses, which might all be true to some degree. And it's my sixth fastest pace ever, so I wasn't so horrible. Still I could have done better.

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