Sunday was an excellent, pretty much perfect day for a race. I woke up a little tired from seeing the in-laws off last night and slowly worked out some of the kinks on the warm-up.  The temps were right around 60 – which almost felt cold! It was great.

The MDRA 15K is the state masters and open 15K championship as well as being part of the USATF-MN Team Circuit.  So needless to say there was some competition at the front! It otherwise would be a fairly small race which included a 5K.  The 15K saw 9 new records this year! According to the final results the winning time was 48:00 a little bit off my official time of 63:24 which is a 15K PR.  This is also my first road 15K, the rest were all part of the DINO Series in Indiana.  I finished 4th on our team this week.

It was a good race – we started about 400m in front of the 5K start, so each loop was a little over 5K. I’m very pleased with my race, I finished approximately on the same pace as last week’s 10K. The race started towards the top of one of the major hills along the course and finished behind the start at the bottom of the hill, ensuring an overall elevation loss.  The course while on the road was fairly scenic winding through Braemar Park, a residential area, and along I-494 and US 169. The first mile was mostly downhill winding past the indoor driving range and parts of the golf course.  The road actually went through the golf course where mile 1 was located. I decided today to hit the split button on my Garmin so I could actually read my mile splits and not have to do the math in my head! This produced a little discrepency since the mile markers were a little off according to Garmin.  I’ll list the split times I clicked.  6:24 for mile 1. I felt pretty good with that split but thought it would be best to slow down a little so that I wasn’t totally wiped out at the end of the race. It was a little hard to let a pack go, but I new it was the smart thing to do.  I continued cruising along as we went through the residential section hit a couple small hills and grabbed some water along the way.  I remained comfortable and ran mostly by myself coming through mile 2 in 6:38. We have left the scenic portion and ran the next mile mostly on frontage roads alongside the interstate so not too exciting.  We also hit the first major hill of the course along this stretch.  The hill wasn’t steep enough to make you winded but it was a fairly long steady uphill. The downhill felt good as we came back by the parking area, crowds, and water stops.  I came through mile 3 in 6:54. The first 5K was 20:29.

Up the hill we go passing the starting line.  I got a couple people on this long steady hill, even though I was trying to keep the pace under wraps. We wound back down the hill and two guys came by at a decent pace.  I decided to go with them for awhile thinking they would help pull me up to the next big pack.  We never caught the pack and I stayed with them for a mile or so.  Mile 4 was 6:50. They didn’t really help my overall pace too much as I’d let them go a little bit and then surge to catch back up. This got a little tiring and finally they just pulled away as we went back into the residential area and hit the small hills. I grabbed some water again and went through mile 5 in 6:49. Back up the long frontage road hill, still feeling pretty solid along the way. I caught a few people on the hill even though I remained at a steady pace.  i came through mile 6 in 6:56. And through the 10K in 41:36 (that 5K was 21:07). That split was actually faster than last week’s 10K and only 8 seconds off my 10K PR. Wow!!

Somewhere in here a woman came into the picture – I can’t remember if she passed me or if I caught up to her.  But going back up the hill I was able to put some distance on her even though I remained at a steady pace.  She caught back up to me heading back down the hill though and we continued battling the rest of the race.  It was nice to have a little motivation to keep pushing hard. I came through mile 7 in 6:58. I remained in front but she was right there and I could here her breathing and footsteps as we hit some of the small hills in the neighborhood.  I figured if I could keep her behind me I would be fine, but didn’t want to get into a kicking match too far out.  I was finally starting to feel the pain of the miles and some pain in my right buttocks.  I came through mile 8 in 7:01. I skipped the final water stop and focused on pushing through – there was a pack a few hundred yards ahead of me.  I started trying to focus on them but also kept an ear out for the woman behind me.  She did pass me coming out onto the frontage road and I stayed right with her.  As we started climbing the hill I started picking up the pace a little bit and was able to go by her pretty easily.  Along the way I caught a Slab City runner and kept picking up the pace or at least the intensity. I came through mile 9 in 6:53. 3/10ths of a mile is a pretty long way to kick and I had no idea what she might try to do so as soon as I saw the 9 mile marker I started picking up the pace and steadily increasing it.  I came through the last 0.3 miles in 1:55 (5:57 pace).  The final time was 1:03:23 (1:03:24 officially) with the last 5K at 21:46. Not even splits but not too much of a spread either, in my opinion.

I felt good and felt like I recovered pretty quickly.  The woman I was racing, Laurie Hanscom finished 9 seconds behind me, so I waited and thanked her for a good race and told her she did a good job. I joined some of the other guys on the team to cheer our female teammates on to the finish.  I finished 58th overall and Laurie finished 4th overall for the women.  I can’t complain too much about the day.

I finished it off with a chiropractic treatment, chiropractors in Franklin.  At first I thought it was a massage which would have felt great on my tight lower back.  I decided to go ahead and give it a try since it was free! It was my first time and was a different feeling.  I think I will stick to massages for now!

All in all a good day!

[tags] MDRA, 15K, Race Review, Edina, USATF [/tags]