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March 26, 2006
36:57/183
This was the Cross de Montbonnot that I mentioned last week. It turned out to be 9.2 km. We ran along tractor ruts and through mud for part of it, which is I guess necessary if you're going to call it a cross (as in cross-country).
The weather's beautiful today, almost too warm. My legs felt sore and stiff as I jogged to warm up. Almost hurt something in my right hamstring doing strides to loosen muscles.
At the start of the run, we all just gathered together in a big mob behind what seemed to me an arbitrary point on the community soccer field. But I'd seen where I needed to go, and except for the tractor ruts, it was places I've run often before. Basically we ran down to the Isère and along the path there, then zigzagged back up to the soccer field, near where Stu and I sometimes run hill reps, which is behind the town hall.
On this sort of short race, I knew I had to run hard. Only after the tractor ruts did I feel that sort of burn in my gut that you get when you're building up too much lactate. My mind wandered a bit. Near the end I was concentrating, however. One of the women standing at a turn guiding us, said in my direction, "Where are all the women?" I thought, None of them are oafish enough to come out here and run like silly brutes. Yet I didn't have the breath to say that to her.
I caught the guy just in front of me on the last hill. Either he didn't do enough hill repeats in practice, or the long runs are paying off for me. There were only 300-400 m left, so I just put the hammer down. They had a clock out near the finish, too. I got to sprint as the seconds were ticking off towards 37:00. I thought, Shucks, I'm slow, and gave it what I had left.
Need to work on pacing and concentration, and I need to get faster. This was 4:01/km, way too slow. Muddy tractor ruts notwithstanding, I'm far off the goal pace.
Posted by Mark at March 26, 2006 10:36 AM
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