I was happy to be able to do this one in person again. Last year, I literally missed it by a day because I had to fly back to work. I won the double in 2019. This is the one where you run the 5 then head to the start of the 10 shortly after. Both the 5k and 10k are scored separately then they tally your overall time for the double up. A couple days after the half, that damn left hammy developed a bruise. Oddly enough, I iced the crap out of it after the race and it slowly began to quit bothering me. I actually did a 35k training run the following weekend with no issues other than an ugly backside. After that, I went dipnetting and camped out for 5 days and caught a lot of reds to fill the freezer. I just did easy 15 k runs those days and that left leg settled down completely. Whew.
I had planned to run the 5 easy because I still had to run the 10. Again, I was treating this as a long interval workout FYI. I started out in 4th and by the 2nd km had eeked up to 2nd. OH crap! I'm going to have to actually bust my butt because now I'm going for top 3! I had put a decent chunk of real estate between the 3rd and 4th place ladies. Well.....with about 800 to go, I knew they were starting to go loke hell behind me so I just kept plugging away damned if I was going to give up my spot. Top 3 go on gun time not chip time and I ended up in a dogfight to the finish. I finished 2nd,(first masters) 3rd was just over a second back 4th was actually7 seconds back on gun time but only a second behind us on chip time. That was just too close!
Now onto the 10-
I thought I was really going to pay for this. I had cut a minute from my 2019 5k and the 5 and 10 are not on fast courses. The 10 is definitely not fast because it's got a few mild rollers and a couple km of trail around the lake. I went out sane and after the 1st km eeked up to 2nd overall again. Knowing the ladies behind could kick, I just opened that gap as widely as I could during the 10. By 4k, I still only had about 20 seconds, but by the time I hit the dirt section by the lake, I was alone and just had to hold my position. The 10 turned out to be easier because I just got away and stayed away. I ended up cutting nearly 3 minutes from my 2019 time as well. 2nd in the 10 2nd in the double first masters and hammy no longer an issue.
No comments:
Post a Comment