Boulevard Bolt Recap

Hail my running brothers and sisters! Today was my first Turkey Day race and it was a doozy. The field was at least 1000+ strong of timed runners and 7000 non-timed runners and walkers. As I've said before, my training since the marathon has been a bit slow, but I figured that I could still finish under 8:00/mile. I lined up in the finish-under-40-minutes section and waited with my buddy Matt for the race to start. With a field this large, inevitably you have several people line up where they don't belong, and it was clear that was happening today. The gaggle of 9 year old boys and the 70 year old in front of me were evidence of this. But I could have lined up in a faster section also, so I won't complain too much. The biggest problem with this scenario is that I had to weave through the crowd till I got separation from the pack. So that means my start time was slower than I would have liked and I burned a ton of energy surging through the crowd.

Mile 1 - 7:22

By mile 2, I had settled into reasonable pace and found somebody to draft. We'll call him gray Underarmor guy. We also caught a downhill and built up a reasonable amount of speed, but I knew that there was a slight uphill coming up.

Mile 2 - 6:51

At mile 3, I felt the weakness in my training catch up with me. I started to slow down and I was breathing hard.

Mile 3 - 7:10

At mile 4, my right foot started to hurt and my side was aching. Part of me wanted to quit, but the other part refused to let anyone see me walk it out. I saw another family from SBA and pushed on. There's nothing like seeing someone you know to inspire you to keep moving. After all, you don't want them talking about how they saw you walk in a race.

Mile 4 - 7:33

Finally the last mile came and thankfully it was mostly downhill. I was tired and hurting from the exertion, but I knew the end was near. I kept moving and was surprised to cross the line under 36 minutes.

Mile 5 - 6:58

I finished the race in 35:55 at a 7:11/mile pace. Matt finished in 42:00 even. I'm still trying to talk my buddy Frank Ziegler into running a race, and I think this would have been a good race for him since it is flat. Regarding my pace, it was few seconds faster than my 10k pace, but then again, I'm not sure that I could have maintained that pace for another mile. Don't get me wrong, this was a good time and I'm happy with it. However, I still think that I could have done better, and I'm disappointed that I've let my training slip. Clearly I need to get back on the stick and beat my post-marathon pounds off my gut. With that I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and I hope to see some of y'all next Friday at the Rudolph's Red Nose Run 5k. Run hard and have fun!