Hobby Jogging: 9/18/11 - Raleigh, NC - The Magnificent Mile

With the last three weeks of my training being 24.5 miles, 17.5 miles and 16.5 miles, I wasn't expecting much today at The Magnificent Mile. The past eight months in general have been a drag due to severe shin splints. When will it end? Hopefully soon. Anyways, enough with the sob stories. The Mag Mile is a great race and as much as I knew today would not be a PR day, or anything close to it for that matter, I still wanted to hop in. How often do you get a chance to run a mile road race?

The Mag Mile also serves as the USATF State Road Mile Championship and is the first race of the Second Empire Grand-Prix Fall series. Maybe my shins will heal miraculously and I'll be ready to run strong the rest of the series. Hey, stranger things have happened!

Warming up the "kick"

Got in a good two mile jog of the course (forwards and in reverse) with John Simons beforehand and did some hard strides. I was as ready as I was gonna be. After announcing what seemed like half the field, we were off. The legs were moving, just not that fast. I got out good, but spent the entire race reeling people in. When I circled the capital and hit the halfway mark in 2:35-6, I thought the A-goal of 5:10 was within reason, but when I hit the 3/4 of the way marker in 3:58, I figured that was likely out of the picture. My legs just weren't ready to run that pace. I kicked home the last 400 as best as I could and saved one more sprint in the last 50 yards, to pass a local high schooler, to finish in 5:16, 4 seconds faster than my B-goal of 5:20.

What can I take from the race? Reassurance that it takes consistent training to perform and a good rust busting performance. Nothing exciting, but a good way to go through the motions of a pre-race warmup and all the things that come with that. Hopefully that'll help in the near future!

Charlie's Angels 2, Full Throttle

My friends and teammates faired great and it was fun to watch. John was a bit up on me in 5:03 (1 second off my 5:02 from 2009), Joe had a big breakthrough in 5:38 (20 seconds faster than he ran in '09) and Erin came in an impressive sixth overall in the Women's race in 5:23. All star blogger, Shelby Van Pelt, ran a strong 6:00 as well (although I know she wanted that 5:59). Performance of the day went to my friend from Winston, Molly Nunn, who ran 5:19 for fourth, one day after winning the Run for Green Half Marathon in Davidson, NC, as she prepares for the Wineglass Marathon (and an attempt at the Olympic Trials Qualifying Standard of 2:46:00).

After the races, we all got together and did a nice three mile cool down through Raleigh. The shins felt better here. Hopefully a sign of what's to come! Until then, it's run when I can, soccer on Tuesday and hopefully get to Winston early enough tomorrow to register for the Boston Marathon!

Also, congrats go out to The Athlete's Foot Racing's Joe Moore, who won in 4:20 and to TAF-ers on the road, Bobby Mack (14:03) and Sandy Roberts (14:13), who finished sixth and eleventh respectively at the USATF Road 5k National Championships in Providence, RI.

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