I try and do this race every year. It's a fairly fast course with usually good weather for running. The last two years the organization has been lacking however as the RD dropped the professional timing/organizing company for a local middle school principal. They do their best, but it's not the same.
Anyway for background I've been doing mostly easy runs since the marathon a couple weeks ago. I have done a couple trail/hill runs though, and have averaged about 50 miles per week since the marathon. My goal for the Fall City Days race was primarily for it to be a training stimulus speed workout. I figured I'd be in maybe low 38 minute shape, but didn't really know. Since I hadn't tapered for the race and I've been dealing with some pretty severe patellofemoral syndrome pain in my knees I wasn't even sure of that goal.
Race day weather was in the mid to upper 50s with occasional very light liquid fog - not bad racing weather! I warmed up with around 4 miles of easy running followed by 3 or 4 accelerations. The race started nearly on time this year which is always a plus! I tried to hold back a little bit the first mile as I always go out too fast. Also I had my GPS watch set to HR display and tried not to look at it during the race.
About one half mile in I was behind a young woman who herself was behind but on the shoulder of a young guy. The guy had headphones on. He turned and without looking launched a glob of spit over his shoulder and directly in to the face of the young woman. She was exceedingly displeased by this gesture, and I'm not even sure the dope who did it even knew. What a tool.
I followed a group of people for the next couple miles. There were no mile markers on the course, and even at the 10k turnaround cone there was no course worker - I guess they were operating on the honor system! Shortly after the turn-around I began overtaking the group ahead of me one by one. After the 4 mile point I had no one in front of me that was within reach. On straight stretches I could just see a bright jersey maybe 800 to 1000 meters ahead of me. Then I hit the 5k walkers. No longer could I run the tangents of the course, and I spent the last 1.5 miles or so weaving in and around them. I finished strong but could not see a finish line clock. I stopped my watch at the finish line matt and finally looked at it as a race volunteer cut the timing chip from my shoe. My watch said 36:58, but I was sure it said 38:something as there's no way I could have run that fast! That would have been almost a full minute PR from last fall when I was just finishing up a great training cycle. Then I looked for the water that is always at the end of a race. There wasn't any! All they had was some cans of something called Neve. It turned out to be an undrinkable heavily carbonated water beverage. Nasty.
After a 1.5 mile cool down I cycled back to see if the results were posted. The results listed my time as 37:00, which must be the 'gun' time - so I guess somehow I did run that fast. It's still tough to figure out where an improvement that big came from though.
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