I’m Happy With That

The race has come and gone.  It was a great morning that is for sure!  I headed out to Ennismore just in time to get registered, I didn’t want to be too early since the check in ended at 10 and the race did not start until 10:45.  So I got checked in and then headed over to the day care to park and change and store all my clothes and whatnot there.

I got back to the starting area and saw a few of the moms from daycare there to do their race as well.  One was walking and the other was running that I saw anyways.  For me it was my first regular, plain ol’ race, and my first race with a chip timer.  Seems odd to me though that there is an ‘official time’ and a separate ‘chip time’, is that not the whole point of having the chip?

As I have written here a few times I have run the race course plenty of times and had noted my time at different points along the track, this way I would know if I was heading out too quick or was off my pace a bit or whatever.  The race started and all us runners were off!

I got caught up in the pack a little bit at the start but since there is a bit of a hill right away I was able to get out of the crowd early and just do my thing.  By the time I had reached the corner I was about half a minute ahead of my time and it was then that I realized that I need to pace myself a little bit, I knew I wanted some energy for the ending.

By the time I had reached the half way point I was pretty much around my usual time, and I was in 16th place I figured if I had counted the people coming back my way correctly.  It was here that I also tried (and apparently failed) to gauge the age of the men who were just ahead of me.  I figured at that point that I was in 2nd place in my age group.  Way in the lead was one of the girls that works at the gym.  She basically sprinted the entire course!

I followed behind the guy I figured was a good gauge for myself as I thought he and I were about the same age and I paced myself off him a little bit, by the time we had reached the sign that is on the road for a reduced speed due to construction – on of my check points during training – I was about 20 seconds ahead of my usual time.  This is where the climb begins and for the next 800 metres the course is uphill.  It is here that I strategized myself out of a real placement medal.  I figured that I would keep my pace during this climb and then once the down hill began I would make the move to overtake what I thought would be 1st place for my age group.

As we passed the daycare I started to push a bit to close the gap, and by the time he had gotten to the crest of the hill I was, I figured, within striking distance.  I opened up down the hill and as I turned onto Cashel road I began to flat out sprint for the finish.  It was too late.  I had waited just seconds too long to start that push.

I ended up 4.1 seconds behind him.  My time though was 21:56.8 (my stop watch had 21:55), about 50 seconds faster than my previous best time on the course, pretty much as I predicted.  The only disappointment is my judging of age.  The categories were in ten year groups so out of the 30-39 year old males I ended up coming in… fourth.  Boo.  Don’t get me wrong I’m really happy with the time I set and my over all place and all that, but once I saw that I was a bit disappointed  because I knew I could have passed that guy had I just turned on the jets a wee bit sooner.

For now I will be satisfied with 12th out of 178 total and 9th out of 62 for males.