Nationals

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Photo by Mike Scott

My first real trip with CMS team members to a national event and I couldn't be more pumped up.
Even though I love running cross country, it's not my strongest season. The course at LeHigh I thought was a perfect match for my crazy left ankle that seems to roll over at any sign of technical trails. CMS put together 5 solid master runners and it was a blast to spend the weekend with them and have some much needed fun. After hearing how the course might play out, I thought it was best to just hang back a bit for the first mile. 5:40 through mile 1 was perfect, although it felt way too easy and I did all I could do to stay patient. The middle of the race was a grind with two very gradual climbs that really took the wheels off of just about everyone. From 8k on is where everyone seemed to try and open up and fly. There was not a lot of back and forth from this point on, it was just hold your position and get in as quickly as you could. I'm not sure what the official results are yet but we at least got 9th and could be as high as 7th.  It's now time to put in some base miles and maybe run a marathon in May.

Under the radar

The CMS men's open and masters team both came out on top once again in the New England Grand Prix Series. This club continues to put together some really nice blue collar efforts. Show up, grind it out and act like you're a champion. Congratulations to all my teammates for two well deserved first place finishes.

GMAA 15k

Sorry to disappoint. Come back later when I have something to write about.

D.C.

Went off on vacation last week to Washington D.C. The running is cool with all the monuments around.

Everyone is out on the Mall where you can see just about every building and monument in about a 45 minute run. This is the Korean War Memorial.

Ribfest

Since my last photo I had a winter hat and gloves on..

Ribfest 5 miler, liked the out and back course. Ribs were awesome also.

Reign On

The third race in the GP Series was the “sprint” edition or better known as the 5k. Pawlicki and I drove over to Cambridge and grabbed a spot in a parking garage to help us stay dry a bit since the rain was coming down pretty hard. The meager tent for registration was already water logged so CMS huddled under an overhang near the start. The plan for this race was to try and run as close to even as possible and try and stay around 5:20 pace for as long as possible. After we hit the mile and listen to the girl call out 5:01 for the first mile we all kind of figured pretty quickly she had no idea what she was doing. Somebody in the pack yelled out 5:23. I tried to really focus on mile two and it seemed to work. I moved up a bit from my early position and just tried to run people down. I got by Levy early on so I was now focused on keeping him behind me. Before I knew it we were on top of mile 3. It came so fast I kind of missed my chance to kick a bit early. In at 16:50 and change. It’s time to get some more miles under my legs and get some speed work in.

Old Bedford

Photo by Krissy K

Oops! Bad info on last post. I've run 11 halfs, 8 of them here at New Bedford.

I had fun but it always hurt like hell.

Brain Stew

                                  

Photo by Krissy K

For me racing is not only training your body to run hard when it hurts the most but also to train your mind when to try and move or just sit and wait. Although today was a day of second guessing, I had some good company which allowed me to refocus at times when I just wanted to just walk off. It's great to be able to just focus on running hard and not have that stupid Achilles yelling at me the whole time. It was a bit tight afterwards but after the warm down things were good. I'm not going to scare anybody just yet but I'll get there. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/442879109