Cave Hill Classic -- Sat. May 10

A surprisingly nice day, considering dire forecasts! Set out at 7:40 and arrived in time to jog up to the top of the hill (just a reminder) and then register by 8:30 a.m. Ivan and then Mark arrived, and we all set out to do a mile or so warmup, just down the track and back. Weijia was there again (with her guy, I think), and there was a pretty solid crowd. Blessed and started with a handdrum, we set off at about 9:15. Pretty fast first mile, inevitably, but I wasn't really going for broke; clocked 5:53 by their mile marker, but GPS called it at 6:05. Then it got slower bit by bit, as the course demands. Steadily losing ground to a guy in orange, and overtook a guy in blue who then pushe me all the way before catching me on the crest of Rattlesnake Gutter. He stayed that one place ahead of me to the end, though I closed back to 2 seconds by the end. As we hit the road for the uphill mile and a quarter, footseps behind and breath sounded like a woman runner, and sure enough she passed at the 4 mile mark, powering on to overtake the guy in blue too (really strong runner; I recognise her from other runs, and her partner had a CMS shirt on; maybe she's from there). The last uphill was tough, as I knew it would be, but I had a bit left for the final 100 yards and closed on the guy in blue. Felt okay afterwards too, so I could have shaved a bit off the time, but not much. Here's the deets:

Time: 35:57
Distance: 5 miles
Speed: 8.3 mph

Comments: satisfying as a recovery run. As Ivan said, it's a training run, too tough for us at this stage of the year to really race. If I ever get a sabbatical, though. . . Kudos to Mark, btw: he was wearing his DD shirt! Oh, and this year for the first time I go to enjoy one of the burritos from Buenos y sanos (sp.?) -- very solid.