Moving On Up

A few hours after the Ed Murphey Mile in Memphis, Tennessee I shifted balance on the wall I was perched on outside a bar filled to capacity. My track season had just ended. As I craned my neck to see inside through big glass windows, huge versions of Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor danced, projected onto the bar wall during round eight of their much anticipated fight. Out there in the Memphis night there was barely room to get an unobstructed view of a TV inside.

Earlier in the evening, eight of us took up our own stage on a high school track on the outskirts of Memphis.  Standing on the makeshift mile start line, thousands of fans clamored at our periphery in the outside lanes and the infield. We felt something like Mayweather and McGregor must have felt in the ring. All athletes do. Knowing that was pain was about to come. Feeling the proximity of human bodies, leaning in, anticipation palpable in eyes.

Just eight men and seven women comprised the mile/1500m fields in Memphis, including pacers. Crowded, physical races are part of running, but this very small field was refreshing after a spring and summer of jockeying for position in US, Irish, and Belgian track races. Minutes before our race, the women put on a great 1500 meter show, and the crowd was still buzzing. The entire track was lined with people. 

Their roar abruptly crescendoed at the start as if torn from the starter's gun, its wave rippling around the oval, preceding and following us as we covered four laps for the mile. I never remember much detail from a race, but I do recall hearing "USA! USA! USA!" on each run of the backstretch. The pace was good and fast early as we passed 800m in one minute and fifty six seconds. 

Pacer Jesse Garn (a great guy) takes us through three laps in the inaugural Ed Murphey Mile in Memphis, TN.

You never truly settle in a mile. It's too short a race, and even the smallest gap to the guy or girl ahead can lose you the race. You enter into a state of strained relaxation at the intersection of conscious thought and subconscious action. The world collapses down into a few blurry objects seen through a pinhole, the wind in your ears, and the notion of how much you have left in your legs versus how far it is to the finish.

With six hundred meters to go I was in second place behind Craig Engels, one of those young guns right out of college. He had just cut his magic mullet off a few weeks earlier, so I thought maybe my old man strength could prevail over him. We were cutting the fastest pace I'd personally been on for a mile or 1500 in the past several seasons, so the letters P and R started floating around in my head on the second bend of the third lap.

But seconds later, coming around into the bell lap, Craig, in the lead, slowed down considerably. It was then that I made the mistake of not maintaining our roll and going around him. Instead, Eric Avila shot out of third past us into the lead. By then there were 400 meters left, I was in third place, and the kick was on.

It is here that we come to the point of, or at least part of the thrust behind, this blog you are reading.

Sticking to a strategy that isn't paying off, but still has a chance to, can be scary. In most endeavors, (except for like, trying to hit a piñata blindfolded)  you'll never find success unless you pursue a given strategy for a long, long, (long) time, wringing it of its potential. We have a word for that: committing. Running is one of those endeavors (you should still commit to the piñata because there's candy in it.)

After finding success in them, I've been committed to running shorter distance races (1500m, mile, 5,000m) since college, and I've been consistent. But pretty much just that: consistent. Running up to and just barely kissing personal bests each year, racking up many 5k performances in the thirteen-thirties and miles with one or two seconds of four minutes. Good performances, but not ones in line with my desire to continue improving.

So imagine my mingled dismay and disbelief when, after that last lap in Memphis, after cushioning ourselves by a full four seconds below four minute mile and P.R. pace through halfway, and seeing the door open to the lead heading into the bell, I finished fourth and the clock read 4:00.3 next to my name in the end. We’d slowed down too much on the third lap and it cost us. Btw, I had ran 4:00.7 three weeks earlier in Raleigh. I told you I was consistent.

(I'm not asking for your phalanges to ply the world's smallest fiddle for me here. Everyone's running career is a big series of experiments, and results are results, especially when they're less than "stellar". [Let me also say that disappointment very quickly gave way to joy at being part of such a great event in Memphis. The top three got under four, so it was a historic race. Having barely finished, I turned around and jogged down the line of spectators for a round of high fives.  My legs experienced a second round of numbing lactic buildup even at ten minute pace {how the hell do people do victory laps or post-race dances <Ezekiel Kemboi> looking so good?!}, but my spirit was quickly repaired. That's the beauty of events that get the fans close, physically, to the athletes. Like Memphis, Sir Walter Miler in Raleigh, the Long Island Mile, and others have been popping up. Like boxing. {In fact I started writing so much on the topic of making running more popular through format and presentation that I had to fork it over to a  separate, forthcoming blog. Stay tuned.}])

Getting fans close to athletes is the future of this sport. Sir Walter Miler in Raleigh, NC.

Memphis ended as somewhat of a paraphrase of my entire season: healthy, running pretty fast, but performing time and time again on the same plane. Our strength coach at Texas once told us that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That’s not really what it says in the dictionary, but I’ve been feeling a bit insane in that sense lately. 

So it’s finally time to try a new strategy. I’m selling my car and moving to Saskatchewan!

Just kidding. I’m not going anywhere. Luckily running offers more than one surface to gallop upon, and plenty of distances to gallop over.  It's time for me to move up in distance. 

No, not to the marathon. Yet. I’m not ready to relinquish all my fast twitch muscle fibers. Just half of them. I’ll be running the Houston Half Marathon in January. Race weekend in Houston will likely have a healing and inspiring effect on the city after Hurricane Harvey, and I’m excited to run and be part of the race. The remainder of 2018 will include more racing on the roads than on the track, although I’ll run a track 10,000m or two in the spring, and will probably hate myself afterwards.

Training will change, too. I’ve never trained like a true miler, but in parallel with the shorter distances I’ve targeted in the past few years, things like volume (mileage over time) and intensity of workouts have always been closer to a shorter, faster, trackier motif while at Princeton, Texas, and Zap Fitness. That’s going to change.

Basically my running pedigree boils down to a battle between my mom and dad’s sides of the family. Dad, with his shorter, stockier stature lends speed and power (and my big butt) to the equation. But then mom comes in and lets me run really far, with her thin, tall dad and willowy ancestors. I’ve been giving them both a chance up until now by focusing on the classic speed/distance combo that is the 5,000m event.  So sorry, dad. Time to give mom and the longer, strength oriented side some more love with things like triple digit mile weeks, longer threshold workouts and tempo runs, and farther long runs.

Squad. Andrew, Aaron, Brandon, and I line up for the Morton Games 5,000m in Dublin this summer.

Absolutely the most important thing for a runner (or anyone, with any passion) is to be excited about running and to keep having fun doing it. When you’ve reached a stale point or a bit of a plateau/mesa type thing, it’s time to make a change. Running in a few new events and getting a novel race calendar is exciting. Even more so is the renewed prospect of finding my true strength and reigniting my belief that I can make a world championship or olympic team. With new goals and a plan to reach them, it feels as if I’ve retired from one job and taken up a new one, where the water cooler is twice as far away, I work late on weekends, and have a brand new stapler.

I took a two week active break after the Memphis Ed Murphey Mile, and am now in the second week of building up mileage. My first race back actually makes this whole blog look like a lie, since it’s a 5k - the USATF Championship / Dash to the Finish Line race in New York City. Last time I ran that race, in 2013, I first met and shared a hotel room with the late runner David Torrence, who tragically died last month at way too young an age. It being one of my first races on the pro circuit, DT made an impression on me. He was eager to hand down seasoned wisdom on training and traveling and racing to a young pro just getting started (though he kept the room way too cold). I was always very impressed with his racing savvy and ability to run everything from the 800m to the 5,000m and beyond at a super high level, and his ability to pump up crowds and make people love him. He will be missed.

After New York it’s a few more road races in November and the Club Cross Country Championships in December. The fall/winter cycle builds to the Houston half marathon in January, after which we’ll start looking at that 25 lap track race and road races around the country.

For those of you who’ve somehow managed to read all the way to here, I reward you with an update on the Zap Fitness vegetable garden. This year has seen by far our most abundant harvest. The tomatoes did decently, though many get caterpillarized if you don’t pick them soon enough. Our real windfall was in jalapeños. They are the spiciest, tastiest ‘peños I’ve ever indulged in. Going in and coming out. And we have more basil than we know what to do with. Make a lot of pesto I guess.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.

Upcoming race schedule:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
November 4	US 5k Road Champs/Abbott Dash to the Finish	New York, NY	Road 5k
November 11	VCU Health 8k	Richmond, VA	Road 8K
November 23	Manchester Road Race	Manchester, CT	Road 4.748 miles
December 9	Club Cross Country Championships	Lexington, KY	Cross country 10k
January 14	Aramco Houston Half Marathon	Houston, TX	Half Marathon

Nap Fitness

Carpet Bagger.  It's an apt caricature of life in rapidly unfolding 2015.  I began in the North, waking before the early January sunrise to the first snow I'd seen in Milwaukee this winter for a flight back down South.  "Don't go just yet" the white blanket seemed to plead as it dissolved in blue deicing fluid over the plane's wings.  Brief solitude in the mountains and Zap before bouncing to Scotland, to Tallahassee, to Boulder, to Ireland, and to Greenville, South Carolina.  We're vagabonds at times, us runners.  Train hard.  Rinse off.  Recover.  Race.  Recover.  Repeat.  Compete with your similarly tasked friends across the country, catch up for 90 minutes at a post race party, and see them again at the next one.  I'm not complaining.  Sometimes it feels like we're on tour, with(out) (tens of) thousands of screaming fans, (coach) buses, the (illegal) drugs*, and the (big) money.  But it's an honest, fast, fun life, and one I'm really thankful I get to live.  Things are going to settle down next week when Zap Fitness makes its springtime return to Zap Fitness, but we're as eligible for a trip to California or Istanbul while cutting Zap's grass field or fixing fence posts as we ever are.

Though the pace of travel and racing feels quick, the in-between times reserved for training and doing laundry are relaxing.  The most important thing I've learned since leaving college is how to chill the fudge out (You take fudge and refrigerate it. [too dry?] {My humor or the fudge?}]).  That manifests itself across the board: the nap between runs, mentally handling a string of hard training weeks with few distractions to break the days up, and in the pace of easy runs.  Pete often begins his Top Secret Zap daily training emails with a quote or tidbit, and one from about a month ago sums the idea up well:

"Handle boredom well - so many athletes I run into struggle with running and doing all the ancillary things associated with their running and little else. Put simply that is what the best in the world do but many fight it in our 'need to be productive all the time' western society."

     - 2 x Olympian Peter Pfitzinger (from a NE Runner Column Aug '91 - What it Takes to be a Pro)

But reading about boredom must be boring.  You'd rather be boring a hole in a board during a boring boarding school advisory board meeting about room and board.  Physicist Niels Bohr once said "An expert is a man (or woman) who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field."  He's talking about being bored.  More specifically, about focus on one single thing for a long time.  Wouldn't you rather fully complete something that took a long time than leave a bunch of competing, partially finished projects to die?  There is always time, lots of time.  I'm slowly getting better at what Pfitzinger described, trusting what I am doing and not worrying about what I could be doing.

The Wanderlust continues, bringing Tyler, Griff, and I to Jacksonville, FL for this Saturday's Gate River Run / US 15k Road Championships.  The race marks my last foray into over-distance before track heats up.  15,000 meters (roughly 9.3 miles) is traditionally a good ways for me, but I'm excited to continue breaking out of my mold and testing myself against the race's best ever field.  It's a flat course until the large hill in the eighth mile and blazing downhill in the ninth to the finish.  There's a handsome prize purse, bonuses for the fastest final mile, and a team competition with payout.  All that makes for an exciting run which will be live here (for free!) at 8:30 EST on Saturday morning.

Preparation for Gate River has gone well.  My most recent race was a 13:58 5k win on the roads in Armagh, Northern Ireland.  Since then the past three weeks of training in Greenville have been bountiful.  Last Wednesday Andrew, Griff and I worked well together over three sets of track 1200m snowball (get faster and faster) + road 2k threshold followed by track 4 x 400m for economy.  On our third set we were 3:17 (69, 65, 61) for the twelve hundred and 6:01 (3:04, 2:56) for the 2k.  It was a manageable workload executed patiently which always bodes well.  Nothing killer, but a fitness booster.  And on Saturday we were 5:06, 4:43, 4:45, 5:02, 4:44, 4:54 for the miles on a 10k progression run with hills.  

European Championships Steeple Chase Silver Medalist Krystian Zalewski (r) and I battling
in Armagh, Northern Ireland.

A close second on my list of things to look forward to after the 15k is our return to Zap and the mountains.  Winter training camp is over, and I can't wait for the silence of the woods, the icy rush of the creek outside, and to work on all the projects I have in mind.  I'm going to finish building our garden fence, plant the garden, re-finish some old rocking chairs, build a desk, and then go fishing.  There's something special about that place in the woods - maybe it just seems like home to me now.  As long as I find time to be bored once in a while.  Either way, I hope all this carpet bagging brings a profit in Florida.

I'm Not a Tree

How would being a tree be. 

Over there, that tree. 

I'm not a tree.  

Maybe it would be nice to be one. 

To stand there in the wind, or maybe 

Not, on a windless day.  

You don't have to eat,

Rather you soak in food with your toes.  

And you breath through your leafy arms.  

But you wouldn't know that, would you, 

Because you're a tree.  

No thinking.  No sorrow.  

No boredom, even.

At least I think, 

But how would I know?  

I'm not a tree.

I am, however very tired.  Although I'm in Colorado, it's the runner's high I'm drenched in, sprawled out on the grass and reveling in the sweet, sick exhaustion that twelve kilometers of cross country at altitude just beat into me, or rather, I beat into myself.  It's weird, the things that pop into your brain when it's deoxygenated.  On race cool-downs I can be reduced to a babbling Shakespearian-esque clown, s-wordplay drawn, in my mind brilliant but in truth muddled to the ears of those bothering to listen.  Hypoglycemia and endorphins steep into a soup of post-nervous energy expenditure elation until I find some kilocalories and lite beer and bring myself back to the normal world.  Especially amplified by a good long race, these feelings put the addiction in running.

Saturday's US Cross Country Championships involved six laps of a two kilometer loop on Boulder's Flatiron golf course.  Though the sun, seventy degree temperatures, and accurate venue name made for nice conditions, the 5200 feet of elevation made it a little harder for lowland-lubbers like me.  Unlike a mile or even 5k, my (hardtack and lard) this race was long enough that it's come to rest in my memory not unlike some Homeric epic with defeats and victories preceding the final result.  It was war out there, and there was definitely carnage.

In the first 2k lap, everyone's nervous energy burned hotly around sharp fenced off turns and through the small rocky ditch about 1800 meters into each loop.  By the first pass by the start/finish area, the major contenders had roughly sorted themselves into a contingent near the front.  Andrew and I were close together in about 25th place.  In fact I almost fell shortly into the second lap and his body helped catch me. (That is team work) Soon after my comfort level began declining rapidly and I knew this wouldn't be a "relax and roll" kind of race.  Every passing minute would require focus.

I began drifting away from the main pack from 3k to 6k into the race.  In the moment I was fighting off negative thoughts, trying not to think about the distance remaining.  I started thinking "Damn it, this is it.  I'm going backwards and the next 25 minutes are going to be helltitude."  But I hung in, and midway into the fourth lap, somewhere around 5k to go, I began making passes around some highly credentialed guys slipping backwards.  Each gave me a small confidence boost and my focus sharpened.  I promised myself I wouldn't save much for a spectacular kick and instead started moving far  out from the tape.

In the hurt box, but my eyes are up.  The course had a nice view of the mountains.
Thanks to Aric Van Halen for the photo

One last challenge remained: the all-of-six-foot sand bunker decline with 600 meters to go.  My legs were so dead that they got tangled in themselves and I hit the deck.  Muscle memory from my skateboarding days took over and I combat rolled and popped right up, hardly losing any time.  Ian Burell was on my tail and I couldn't afford to lay in the dirt.  Shaken up, I "took off" (which probably meant a blazing five minute pace at this point) with another runner in my sights ahead.  In the finishing chute I just missed getting him for a fifteenth place finish in 38:14.

I wasn't going to let myself be disappointed in fifteenth, not after how low I sunk mentally and how hard I fought back.  Though I missed my goal of making the world cross country team, which required a top-six showing, I realize that sometimes you have to be pleased with a bloody guts and little glory result.  If you can't be alright with missing goals sometimes, you'll never have the gas to get them.  This mentality counterweights complacency, but I'll save being hard on myself for other days and (shorter) races.

I felt a bit of a pang looking at the 2k loop splits published post race day.  Let's just say my fastest loop was only two seconds faster than the winner's slowest.  But I'm not a tree, and I'm also not a pure cross country guy.  As an aside, this years field was high quality, which is a good thing for American distance running.  I'd argue (as C. Derrick has) that greater participation in cross country by our pros improves our Olympic chances on the track.  Many guys are going straight to the track post collegiately, perhaps excessively.  Either way, these results represent a vast improvement in my ability over hill and dale. (but not sand bunker) In high school I finished only as high as fifth at the Wisconsin state cross country meet and was never an All American in NCAA cross country.  Doing "pretty good" this weekend translates to exciting prognostications for track, and that has been the plan all along since September.

Now the plan shifts toward the oval via the roads.  Next week I'll be running a road 5k in Armagh, Ireland.  On π day is the Gate River Run / US road championships 15k in Jacksonville.  A rest week precedes the buildup into outdoor track season and lots of fun races.  I apologize in advance if I meet you on a cool down.

A preliminary schedule of my upcoming races:

Date	Race Name	Location	Venue / Distance
February 17	Armagh Road 5k	Armagh, Ireland	Road 5k
March 14	Gate River Run	Jacksonville, FL	Road 15k
April 11	Blue Shoes Mile	Greenville, SC	Track mile
May 2	Payton Jordan Invitational	Palo Alto, CA	Track 5000

Double Trouble, Explained

Act IV Scene I:

In a cavern, somewhere in Scotland, three witches chant

Double, double, toil, and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

The hell-broth mud cauldron boiled coldly under our feet, squirming its way through shoe mesh  and plastering down leg hair (if you had it) through four circuits of Holyrood Park's two kilometer course in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Nothing (especially the hotel showers) escaped the bubbling black mud, and no tourist could we have immersed themselves in Scotland as we did.  The wind screamed and whipped us from the West, streams lapped at our ankles, and the sizable crowd bore witness to a dominating performance by team USA over the likes of Great Britain and Europe.

Kicking home in Scotland

At the post race trivia game, my team won best name with "We Kilt It", though "We Got Bag Piped" would have been a more appropriate description of our quiz performance.  It being my first ever senior US team berth, this brief trip to Scotland was especially memorable.  As runners we're measured greatly by US team qualifications, performances at international events (read: medals), and trivia prowess.  With USA blazed on my chest for the first time, I feel I've broken the ice.  I'll admit, Edinburgh is probably the easiest team to make, but (raises voice) I MADE IT!  You have to start somewhere.

The race was like nothing I'd ever experienced before in cross country.  The course put  many of the grass track-like venues in the US to shame.  It had rained for days leading up to the day of competition, and the junior races before ours made the 2k loop nice and sloppy.  Every lap featured two small but sharp uphills, a longer hill, two small stream crossings, one of which contained a boulder that only allowed one body through at a time, and plenty of ankle deep grass and mud mixture.  ("He must be a King."  "Why is that?"  "He hasn't got shit all over him.")  15mm spikes were the fashion of the day.

Team USA senior men before and after the race.

They say in Scotland that if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.  It was sunny during our race but began snowing during the women's senior race.  It wasn't unlike Heps 2010.  It all created a very surreal cross country experience, one that made me feel happy and very alive.  I didn't finish up where I would have liked to in the field, but I'm concentrating on the positive of having fought hard in difficult conditions on a big stage.  Tough races never are easy to swallow, but I think you get over them more quickly as you grow more experienced and mature.

Perhaps my favorite part of the trip followed the awards ceremony.  Zap team mate Andrew Colley pointed to a distant volcanic peak, barely visible through the snow, and said "Letsrun up there."  My legs were tired from the race but I couldn't pass up the adventure.  We walk-jogged to the top of Arthurs Seat over rocks, mud, and snow and were rewarded with another abrupt change in the elements: the sun erupted through the clouds and we saw all of Edinburgh below; the castle, the sea, the cross country course, and surrounding pure green countryside.  We didn't bring phones (so did it really happen?) but we kept the image in our memories, which is sometimes better anyway.  On the way down some strange women asked if we had any fillets of fenny snake, but alas, we'd run out.

On the flight home I reflected on where I'm going and what's at my tail.  I'm on the cross country plunge: no indoor track, many and frequent miles, lots of strength workouts, and four (count em!) four cross country races by February's end.  Then I'll run the US 15k Championships in Jacksonville, FL in March.  Only after all that big boy work will I step back on the track and roll, and if all goes as planned, I'll have lifted myself in strength and toughness.  I think it's good to try and make every year a little different in terms of racing calendar and training to keep the body and mind from dragging, pitching out the things that don't work.  I'm excited to see where it propels me.  (sorry please don't mach me)

Zap Fitness is fully inundated (that is not appropriate use of that word) in winter training camp in Tallahassee.  For those who don't know, Trailahassee is secretly an excellent running location for its extensive and beautiful parks and trails.  Don't tell anybody though, because I like the lonely sound of footsteps on grade 10 crushed limestone laid over red clay dirt in silent prehistoric spanish moss-adorned woods.  This time of year, our lives consist of running, eating sweet potatoes and quinoa, napping, going to coffee shops, running again, eating more sweet potatoes, and sleeping.  Ok, we eat and do more than that, but the point is we're focused.  I just hope I run into an alligator this year while we're down here.  Not literally though.

Andrew and I are training for the US Cross Country Championships in Boulder, CO on February seventh.  After that we'll return to Tallahassee for a few days then head to Zap for a week, and finally begin training camp beta in Greenville, SC with the Furman Elite crew.  Here's to doubling for a charm of powerful trouble and a Packers win today.

The Zap Fitness crew working out on the grass in Tallahassee.  L-R Joe Stilin, John Simons, Cameron Bean, Chris Moen and the beard, and Andrew Colley hiding.  I ran this entire workout with my eyes closed.

First Race

BOOM: Everything indoor track hits me at once: the air, smell, light, and sound of people. With it comes an instinctual rush of adrenaline as we enter Indiana University's Indoor Track facility.  As I step in from the rain, having not set foot on one of these banked ovals in eight months, I think, wow, it's suddenly indoor season and it's time to race.

Ryan Dohner and I are entered in the small but stacked invitational section of the 5000 at the Hoosier Invitational, ready to open our indoor seasons for Texas a little earlier than usual.  We came here with the goal of running 13:45 or faster, a performance that should qualify us for the national meet in March.  The plan is to run a slightly cautious 66.5 per 400 for the first 3000 meters, then increase the pace to break 13:45 over the final 10 laps.  Leading the way would be two very capable rabbits in former Indiana runners Andrew Poore and Ben Hubers, and with Olympic trials 5th place finisher Ryan Hill of NC State and four freshly honored cross country All Americans in the field, the race was sure to produce some fast times.

Tonight is a bit of a cross roads for me: I haven't raced since my last time in a Princeton singlet on June 16th in a 1500 up in Indianapolis. I'm toeing the line knowing only what my workouts have been saying about my fitness.  I know that it was going to take some serious guts over the last 2k to muscle out a sub 13:50 clocking.  The outcome of this race will be plugged into the increasingly complex algorithm that determines the plan for me at Big Twelves and Nationals, and thus the way I'll train in the coming months.  Tonight is also my first time running as a Longhorn and that adds a bit of excitement to it all.

The smell of burnt sulfur still hangs in the air from the gun as we pass the start, one lap already complete, falling into a single file line behind Hubers and Poore.  Chasing after the two unattached rabbits are my teammate, myself, Lane Werley of UCLA, Zach Mayhew of Indiana, and Hill and Andrew Colley of NC State taking up the rear.  Passing the mile in 4:27, we maintain that order for 3k, running consistent 66.5 - 67 second laps.  I see 8:18 at 3k and do a self check as Hubers steps off, his task complete.  I'm feeling about normal for this point in the race.  But as Poore takes over and the pace increases slightly, I know it's time to focus as fatigue begins setting in.  Around 3600 the line of runners begins to string out.  200m later Hill passes me, followed shortly by Mayhew.  I'm beginning to tire, and with 1000 to go I've switched to survival mode - just get to the finish!  I run some unimpressive laps in no man's land and cross the line in 13:59.23 for fourth.  As is often the case towards the end of a race, I can't say much about the final 5 laps - I just don't remember them.  Maybe too much lactic acid in my brain?

In terms of the time goal, the result was a bit of a disappointment.  I wasn't able to race competitively with the field when the going got tough.  However, lots of positive things come from the effort.  Being in sub fourteen shape in December is pretty good in my book, especially for not having raced in a while.  It puts me within striking distance of my goals for the indoor season.  Getting the race in my legs is of course a workout too.  In that sense, I'm happy that I went for it.  Now I know exactly what kind of shape I'm in - my training will be more informed and I'll have a firm idea of what areas need work.

That's what running is - lots of work, chances to race, success, and failure.  Getting used to the entire process takes a long time, but I think that seeing the positives in every situation helps you get to where you want to be.

Race Video Here