There are those days and this was one of them. Probably set up by what transpired yesterday. Carolyn ran at Franklin Park in the Catholic Memorial invitational. It was raining hard, the course was puddly and as the races ran over it, it became progressively muddier and more slippery. I was going to take an easy run around the course to help prepare for next week's Mayors Cup but thought better of it in these conditions. Standing around for several hours in those conditions drained me. After coming home, doing the normal weekend shopping and errands, I snuck in a brief nap before heading out to the NE Revolution soccer game last night.
So while I was mentally prepared for running the 10.5 mile course today, and with my Pacer buddies, there was not enough gas in the tank for it.
Two of us started at 6:30 AM for the 10 mile run today. The course is two loops, the first section (3.4 miles) loops us back to the beginning were if we are fortunate, we can pick up the 7.1 mile runners who are heading out at 7:00 AM. There were four of them today and we stayed together for the next two miles before I started loosing contact with the pack. I managed to keep contact for another 1/2 mile but then they were gone and I continued to fall behind.
Times like this you concentrate on form, and stride, and focus, and keep going.
You don't worry about pace at that point.
You are not going to get any faster.
You just need to keep going to get to the finish.
The sun continued to rise, the wind seemed variable. Big gusts, then smaller but steady breezes. The second loop took us around and thereby the wind kept changing from side to directly head on, eventually to the other side and then head on into the finish, although the last stretch is tree lined and the wind is broken significantly by the wise farmers who put in the tree line many years ago.
Not a great run, slower by 12-14 minutes than last week. I'll sleep well tonight.
