Training Log Archive: ernst

Great Bay Half. I would usually not want to race a week before Boston, but I had signed up for this in August assuming it was 2 weeks before Boston. But due to the calendar, Boston is early this year. Therefore my goal was to use this as a warm-up and go slow.

I met up as usual at Drew's and Cristine's house in Newmarket for pre-race gabbing. Smaller group this year. Drew mentioned 7:45 - 8:00 target pace, which seemed like a good jog pace for me - roughly a minute slower than my race pace. So we ran together the first 4 miles, but then Drew fell back, and I just continued at around 7:30, which was very comfortable. I maintained a 'slow cadence' breathing throughout, except on the 5 or 6 short but steep hills where I increased the cadence and shortened my steps to keep pressure off the legs. That all worked fine and I never got out of breadth. I had time and plenty of energy to thank the spectators and the race volunteers, had fun dancing with the belly dancers and grooving to the road side musicians, high-fived many people except Dave, the roller bladeing, hula-hooping fiddler whom I distracted a bit right near mile 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uibupxvy5Pg

That was a lot of fun, not having to suffer for once in this race. Turnout was lower than usual, and it was pathetically low in my age class. So I won again with quite the margin, which was not my intention, but I take it anyway.

Then hopping, jogging, high-fiving around the finish, and then back up the hill to the library, where I looked out for Drew and ran with him to the finish.