What a great morning for racing! We had sunny skies and cool temps in the low 60’s. I was there for the elite mile. At this point in my training I had yet to run under 4:42 since the foot surgery. Luckily coach had me bang out a few sets of 6,4,3,2,1 to wake up the little bit of leg speed I had.
I guess they let anyone into the “Elite” mile as I got in along with some other EMU boys such as Lee Shaw and Terefe Ejigu.
The race started off nice and fast with a big group of guys. I’m not sure what our splits were exactly because they were a little off. There is no way we had a group as big as we did and split a 58 first 400M. Then somehow slowed to a horrid 800m of 2:12 or something. It was a road mile so I guess that is what you get.
By the time we hit the 800m it was just Ian Boyle and myself. I knew I didn’t really have the kick I used to have so I figured I better start pushing with 800m to go. I did and Ian and I just kept pushing harder and harder.
It seemed every time I came up on him he would inch away. We literally went push for push for about 700m. With less than 100m to go I was all out and Ian just began to walk away from me. He ended up putting about 2 seconds on me at the very end. I like to think I made him work hard but I think he only ran as fast as he needed to for the “W”
Results:
http://www.runmichigan.com/r_view.php?id=19334
The fun part came when we all grouped up to pace Mark Savedes in the 10K. There was a group of four really fast guys, all mid to low 14 min 5k guys. Then we had Mark rounding out our 5th.
We started nice and slow and still talking about the mile we just ran (Mark did not run the mile.) Then we started telling stories and Lee told us how he lost a bunch of weight which is why he ran 4:38 instead of 5:38 in the mile.
Poor Mark…we are all having a casual conversation while leading the race and pacing him. He was not talkative 🙂 Eventually someone told Lee and Terefe that the winner gets free shoes so they decided to start running and went from 6:20pace to 5:15ish.
Mike and I stayed with Mark and just kept on him. Pushing him, coaching him, and cheering him. It was so much fun. The course was great and Mark was running fast and smooth. We ended up crossing the line in a 39:10 breaking Mark’s 20 year old personal best by 45 seconds. That was just huge.
Mike, Mark, and Jordan