Chris - 3.1

Well today was a lot of fun. I felt like Mr. Official Serious Runner because it was my buddy Dan's first race and Chris' first race since doing cross country his frosh year of high school. In fact Chris remarked to me as we pulled into the parking lot that there were a lot of people, and in my head I went "Psshhh, this is nothing compared to the Butte to Butte or Race for the Cure". And even though I haven't graduated to running shorts yet, I did wear my tech T from the Ridgeline Ramble. We got there with plenty of time to go pick up our bib's and long sleeve red tech shirts, and go on a nice little warm up jog around the large parking lot across from where the start was. Here's a map of the course that I made if you're interested. We were able to find Dan and his cousin before the start. Then we walked up to the front about 8 people back and I started stretching, and decided I wanted to walk up closer to the start line after seeing who was standing in front of me.

The start wasn't super fast, in fact after we rounded the first corner I started to try and reign it back a little and it seemed to me that I wasn't pushing it a ton, so I decided to keep that pace for the first mile and see what happened. After about a 1/4 mile Dan caught up to me, which suprised me! I knew he had been running a bunch but I didn't think he'd have the speed. And considering I had an unsettling nightmare earlier this week about showing up for the race late, running while pinning my bib on, and Dan beating me by like 4 minutes, his running the first mile with me concerned me maybe a bit more than it normally would have lol. As it turned out, I was able to put some distance on him during a slight downhill portion after a small bridge. Passed the first mile at 6:02. Little fast but I wasn't nearly as concerned as when I ran that time in my last 5k. Dan ended up not catching up to me again, but that was okay because at the end I was able to come back to the finish line and cheer him on as he came in. In fact he put up his hand to give me a high five as he came toward the line; that was fun. We also cheered Chris across the line, and Dan's cousin - but she was so gassed that she didn't see or hear us over her ipod, which I guess she uses in conjunction with a Nike+ chip to calculate her pace and stuff. Anyway, I could tell I slowed down the second mile, but not too bad. I had a couple people coming up on me but was able to hold them off for awhile. Passed the second mile marker at 6:22 and was starting to feel it a little bit. At about 16 minutes my right knee started to tighten up out of nowhere. Bad news! I tried to adjust my footfall or anything that might alleviate the pain and tightness, but nothing worked. So I just tried to keep pushing myself and ignore it. Passed the 3rd mile marker at 6:35. After I turned the corner toward the finish I started striding out a lot more, and waited until I was about 50 yards before I started sprinting. I was surprised to find that I put on a ton of speed and came flying across the finish at 19:30! Finished the last .1 in 30 seconds. A new PR by almost a full minute (but didn't beat Steve's unfortunately)! I told my friends I wanted to stick around for the results so we could see who won and stuff. Portland Running Company put on the race, so they threw out free running socks during lulls in the announcements. To make a long story short, I was surprised to hear my name called for coming in third place in my age group! That was pretty neat; I never thought I'd place (even in my age group) for a race of that size. After the race I was pleasantly surprised when both Dan and Chris separately said that the race was fun and we should do it again sometime. In fact, apparently Dan went and ran a mile time trial a week or so ago and got exactly 5:40 (my PR). I told him I would've been pissed if he got 5:39! The results of the race aren't posted yet, but he ran in the mid 20's and Chris came in a few minutes after him.

By the way I just read one of the article's Luke posted about barefoot running and nose breathing, I think I'm definitely going to have to try that, especially considering my recent hip and knee injuries. So right now I'm icing my knee and taking painkillers, and going to take it super easy running this week in preparation for the 10k next Sunday!