A stroll through the park

Also known as the USATF New England XC Championships.

If you've been reading this thing at all lately, you've seen that I've been traveling almost every day and have not been doing much as far as workouts go. However, I decided - what better way to recover from a 4000 mile drive than to jump in a 10K XC race? As some of you may recall, I did well at this race last year and because of that, I was holding on to a hope and a prayer that I could pull it off again. Of course reality set in and I finished 23rd, over a minute slower than last year.

I know us runners can get into trouble when we make comparisons to previous years like this, but it's hard not to think about it. I know things have been completely different leading up to this race and therefore, the result was a completely different outcome. Honestly, I pretty much expected a mediocre-at-best race from myself considering the weeks leading up to it, so I'm not all that upset with what I did out there. It was good to get a hard effort in and break a little rust off in the process. I felt like I was reasonably competitive in the early and middle stages of the race as I tried to hold off the army of b.a.a. guys. But in the final mile or so, the sea of blue got away from me, and I just watched them all cross the finish line ahead of me as I had no other gears to go catch them with. For those that are curious about the time, I ran 31:51. I hit the mile in 4:51, 2 miles in 10:07, 5K in 16:00, and then I stopped paying attention.

I will say that even though I didn't really feel like my competitive self out there, it did feel comforting to be back in a familiar setting, wearing the NB Boston colors once again, and having a great support group on the sidelines as well as in the race itself from all those b.a.a. guys that were going by me in the latter stages. I feel pretty lucky to know so many great people that share the same passions as I do and support me through all the peaks and valleys that it offers.

I feel like this was a good starting point for me as I move forward. As I start in on workouts again in the coming weeks, I am optimistic that things will turn around rather quickly and I'll be able to start producing some results before too long.