Monday, April 3, 2017

A little late for a first race report but anyway

Started my base mileage early on in December and so far logged over 600 miles leading up to my first race of the year.  The Lakeland Union High school in Minocqua Wisconsin has hosted the April Fools Run 5k for over 10 years and always starts at around midnight.  This race is always a large draw with costume contests to Zumba warmup class to unique awards.  I've been a winner of this race for 3 years and hoped to make it 4 on Saturday night but a younger athlete from Minneapolis had other plans and a pr of 15:45 to put this old guy away early.

I typically don't taper for this race and I definitely don't shy away from mileage in the week leading up to it.  In fact I had over 40 miles and a hard day of strength training and I chose to lift legs so I really did it to myself.

I felt heavy in the legs prior to the start but not as bad as I had anticipated and got off the start line at a fast and controlled pace and as rabbits faded and things settled down I found myself in 2nd overall with the leader slowly but visibly pulling away, not to much after the first kilometer of the race Andrew Schilling, a former Lakeland distance star and UW-Madison Track Club racer pulls alongside of me and begins to pull hard and I respond accordingly for about another mile until I maxed out and fell off his increasing pace.  He was out for a training run and it was nice to have him there to chase for the last bit of the run.

I was pleased with being a few seconds slower to be honest and running in the pitch black dark night is always a challenge both in regard to pacing and footing, but the season always has a first race and I'm glad it was a good one even though I didn't.

Got on the podium with a second place overall and a time of 19:54 over 3.44 miles pacing at around 5:45.  Pretty solid 5k time is around 18:00 based on my gps tracked 5k.  Did a very easy 4 mile trail run on Sunday to end the week with over 47 miles and capped off my first build block with 97 miles and heading into a deload week.  

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