"Everybody Knows it's Windy"
New Bedford Half Marathon today down on the scenic New Bedford shore. A nice 30 mph wind with temperatures right aroud 35 greeted the runners this morning. A good day to hone your racing in a group skills and driving into he wind.
I felt really good this morning even with all of the running around to various get togethers yesterday for saint patrick's day. I immediately threw out any intention of going for the win when Pat Moulton pointed out Alena Reta was there. Too bad they don't have testing at these races, then the drug cheats would not show up at every race with prize money. Alena won a race in holyoke yesterday and decided to double up for more money. He was 39 this weekend. Hard to tell how old he will be next weekend. We had a big group to run with for the first 4 miles and then I threw in a fast mile to get us back on pace and it petered down to 4. Matt Ely, Jeremy Borling, and a Westchester Kenyan. Some did more work than others and we really finished strong. I really tried to drive the last hill and last 1/4 mile.
These splits are funny because the wind was so strong. The fastest miles were the easy ones being downhill with the wind. Here they are.
1. 5.14
2. 5.24
3. 5.42
4. 5.28
5. 4.59
6. 5.08
7. 4.58
8. 4.57
9. 5.16
10. 5.08
11. 5.24
12. 5.20
13.1 5.44 (1.1, missed 13)
- 1.08.48
The right quad was 100%. The left shin was fine for the race but on the cool down really tightened up on me. I am on my way to ice right now. That seems to help a lot. The mileage for the week was really down because I took Monday off, tuesday easy, and had to skip Friday's evening run because after an hour through memorial forrest in the morning for the first time in a while, a casual 12" of snow fell in a nice end of winter screw you to marathoners looking for trails. 92 for the week. As my coach said "That 0 was probably the best thing you could have done." He was right. The next few weeks will be sharpening and honing the strength I have built through last 10 weeks. The trails appear to be closed until at least next week because it is going to be cold until Saturday.
That's all I got