Monday, March 31, 2008

A Dizzy Daze PR!

In the past few months, and the last few weeks, some would say that I have gotten a little "loopy". Well my race this weekend was in Seattle at Green Lake. It was 10 laps around Green Lake for 32 miles, which is a little more than a 50k.

I wanted to find a way to cut the cost of my races as much as possible. With the cost of gas around $3.30-$3.50 I want to get my races in cheaper. So instead of driving up on Friday, I decided to drive to Olympia and spend the night in car, then drive the rest of the way. It worked out well. I slept at the rest stop at mile marker 95 on I-5. It was cold and I woke up about every 3 hours or so.

I arrived at Green Lake about 6:20am. The race was set to start at 7am. I check in got my bib. It was nice to so many other Maniacs. I even saw tc, who ran at Pacific Rim two weeks ago. He was going to do the 100k, which made me wonder if I should have, but I thought a 50k would be smarter.
My goal for this race was to set a 50k PR. It's a flat road course. So I thought to myself, "if I can run at the same speed as a road marathon and hold it for another five miles, I could run between 4:30-4:50."

So that is what I did!
In the first lap, I started out strong. Each loop was 3.2 miles. I ran it in 27:52, which was 8:43 pace. I remember thinking that if I keep this pace up I could run a 4:40 race. I seemed to be in the front of the pack which kind of made me wonder if I was running to fast.

In the second loop, I ran even faster. The weather was great, and I was just enjoying the day. In some ways I figured this was just a marathon. I ran in 26:21 (8:14 pace). In lap three I ran a 27:23 (8:33 pace) on track for a 3:43 marathon which is average for me. Leading up to the half way point I ran 25:52 in lap 4, and 26:06 in lap five. This gave me a 2:13:33 first half. There was only one person in front of me. We finished the first half together, but he was still running strong. I knew I couldn't keep it up. So I let him run ahead.


In the second half, I just kept running strong. I was passing the other runners right and left. I was running between 27 and 30 minute loops. I ended up with a marathon split of 3:43:11 (8:31 pace). I ran the second half in 2:22:14 (8:53 pace). I ended up with a time of 4:35:47, which was within my range of 4:30-4:50. I finished in second place to Jake Lin.

I stuck around for hours helping out with recording times, and helping the other runners. I left after Jonathan Bernard finished his 100k in 11:30. It was a fun day, and enjoyed it all.


I then drove to downtown Seattle and checked into the hostel. I spent the night there and attended Mars Hill on Sunday morning. Then I drove home.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! Second place and another PR!? *Second Place?!* You are really hitting your stride, way to go.

Darin Swanson said...

Congratulations on the PR!