Monday, March 30, 2009

Sam Costa

I ran the 40th Annual Sam Costa Half Marathon Saturday. It’s the oldest road race in Indiana. Weather was great, cool and overcast, perfect except for a little too much wind. I started out ok. Maybe a little quick, but not too bad. I soon settled into a nice steady pace around 7:13 or so per mile. After passing the 7 mile mark I started to pick up the pace. I was passing people and was feeling pretty good. Then just past the 9 mile mark my left calf suddenly started to cramp up. I stopped for a moment to massage it. This helped a little, but I knew I was in trouble. I started running again, but very tentatively. With every step of my left leg I had to pull my toe up to keep the calf stretched. This is no way to run, but I was somehow able to run the next two miles at 7:30 pace. As I hit mile 12 I realized if my calf didn’t completely disable me I could still squeak out a half marathon PR. Well, I made it to the finish in 1:36:14, a little more than 2 minutes faster than my previous best which was run on this same course in 2007. I think I lost around two minutes to the calf problem so if I can get healthy I can shave some more time off that PR.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Spring Means DINO

The first race of the DINO Trail Series happened last Saturday at Eagle Creek. The weather was perfect and the trail conditions were pretty good too. A little mud in a few spots, but otherwise dry. Very large turnout, in fact the largest ever for a DINO Series event, 202 finished the 15k and 195 finished the 5k. I'm glad the economy isn't keeping people from racing, maybe we're all just running away from our troubles.

The course was a loop that was repeated three times for the 15k. The course was modified slightly this year to shorten it. Last year the course was a little longer than 3.1 miles. This year it was a little short of 3.1 miles. I ran a pretty good race, didn't start out too fast and was able to maintain a good steady pace the entire race. Lots of fast runners though and I wasn't able to crack the top three in my age group. Still I'm happy with my effort and the finish time of 1:05:44. I'm still plagued by this respiratory infection, but I didn't let it get the best of me this time.

This morning I did a set of 75 burpees in 12:53. Not a record time for me, but still a good effort. Tonight is Indy Runners Mini training at Butler, an easy 6 mile run.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Bubble Burst

I was really bummed out after my poor performance last Saturday at the Spring Fling 15k race. I ran almost four and a half minutes slower than last year. Today though I am taking some consolation from the fact that I've had a respiratory infection for about two weeks now and I guess that took more out of me than I thought it would. I didn't think about this until this morning when I went out for an easy six mile jog and my legs were extremely sore and lifeless, much more than they should be from a mere 15k. I have another 15k race this Saturday, the first race in the 2009 DINO Trail Series. I hope this infection is cleared up by then.