BOF Classic 10K - Sat. August 11

Second attempt at this one, and with the benefits both of last year's run (43:14) and a good review of the course when Ivan and I went up a couple of weeks ago, it went pretty well. Conditions simply couldn't have been better -- Friday was cold and rainy, but the weather cleared up in the night, and the day became sunny. So, cool, dry, no wind, bright morning sun, just perfect. Hadn't run since Wednesday, as a planned trip on Thu. p.m. didn't come off. But I ended up getting a good warmup. . .

Ivan had picked up my reg. packet early, but I forgot that my phone won't work in Shelburne, and we didn't manage to find each other before the race. I was later than planned in arriving, which didn't help. Parked beside the river near McCusker's, then jogged in to look for the VFW, our rendez-vous, but took a while finding it, jogging a useful distance in the process. No-one was there except runners in the two mile race., so I went out the the reg. spot, a couple of blocks away and confirmed that Ivan had indeed picked up my reg. (#200); he had. After some discussion, they advised me to get a new number, so I became #819, by which time it was nearly 9:00 and I had to hustle to make it to the start line. There on the bridge I found Christi with the #200, and Ivan ready to run. So all was well, enfin.

A minute later and we were off. Nice steady first two miles, trying to keep in the low 9mph range, then the hill: it felt slow, but steady and possible, as I knew exactly how long it would go on. Took a while to recover at the top, so I guess I had tried a bit beyond my training (pushed by a young teenaged boy who was phenomenal, and who then overtook at the top). After recovering I just kept pushing for a good pace; on mile 5 I could feel that my speed training has been deficient (sore thighs and no push left), but then in mile 6 it got a bit better as the downhills varied the rhythm a bit. Made my last dash a bit too late, overtaken by 3-4 people before I went for it, though I closed to within a second of the last one. Here are the laps by my digivice's count:

6:14, 6:15, 8:39, 6:24, 6:26, 6:16 and a faster finishing bit (6:00 or better)

and here's the official stats:

Time: 41:59
Speed: 8.88
Distance: 6.2 miles

Comment: I would have been happy to match last year, or break 43:00, but to break 42:00 (albeit by ONE second) was a real boost. I was pretty knackered by the end, in fact, though ready to jog again in a few minutes. Two days later I'm still pretty sore, so I think I tried pretty hard. Maybe could shorten it a bit with more speed training -- but we'll see. Definitely happy with the hill work (even though 8:39 sounds awful, I'm happy -- you'd need to do the hill yourself to see what I mean).