LMJS 10k LBRR

I've had plenty of runs since my last posting, but haven't felt the urge to write about them. Of note were my last Marin Ave run; no, I didn't finish, but I decided upon hitting Euclid that I might die if I tried this again. I mean, I may try it again, but I will have to advance at a more gradual pace to build my strength. I also had nice trail run last Sundayon the Strawberry Creek trail; I made it all the way up to Grizzly Peak Blvd, but then made the mistake of running back downhill on the paved roads instead of the trail. This cut about 2 miles off the return trip and was, consequently, much steeper and brutal on my knees. I also had a pretty good tempo run on Thanksgiving afternoon (before dinner) which left me feeling pretty good about this morning's 10k, the Lake Merrit Joggers and Striders 4th Sunday run.

LMJS puts on a no frills race every month on a certified course around Lake Merrit in downtown Oakland. The lake is about 3 miles around, and runners can choose to do a 5, 10, or 15k. I just wanted to take my pulse to see where I was after this rather mediocre year of training, 53 weeks after running a 1:24 in the Philly Half Marathon. I was hoping to find that I could come in right around 40 minutes, and I planned to try to negative split my laps, 20:12-19:48, if I was up to it.

I took Bart to downtown Oakland and jogged a mile to the start in the park, paid my $5 and pinned a tag with my name to my shirt. The start was a little late since Students Run Oakland had come out for a training run and registration was going a little slowly, but about 100 folks lined up and were off by 9:05. As I expected, a couple of students jumped out to the front but quickly fell back, and by 1/4 mile I was in a loose pack of 4, with (I think) another guy way out ahead of us. The pace felt a little fast for me, but I thought it a good idea to hang on until I got my first split. When we hit mile 1 in 5:57, I felt some relief but knew that my pllan was out the window. I dropped back, along with another guy in a green shirt; I later recognized him as Phil, a guy that I've run with at the Transports trail runs. I followed him through mile 2 and then felt him slow, so I passed and hoped that he would latch on to push me forward. Soon the sound of breathing faded, though, and I had to push myself through the next mile. Phil soon caught back up to me; turned out that he was running the 5k and just passed me as he finished. My 3 mile spllit was 7:04, but the next .1 mile measured only ~:27, so mile 3 was clearly long. Not sure about mile 2, which had split in 6:35. Anyway, my 5k split was 19:55, which made me happy although I was pretty sure that I wouldn't break 40 for the race running in no man's land. This turned out to be the case, and I had no competition for my position for the next 3.1 miles, although I lapped a few folks at the back of the pack. I finished the 10k in 40:18, first in my age group and, I think, 3rd overall, but the overall results haven't been posted yet.

The race is pretty easy to evaluate. I was about 2 minutes off my PR, set last fall at the Ben Franklin Bridge run, but I'm not in a bad position considering that I've run not even 2/3 the mileage this year. I have been running low mileage this year, with very little speed work, but I've done hella strength work with all the hills that I'm running, and that seems to cancel out one of my deficiencies. I was reminded, though, that track and tempo work is important not just to build speed, but to work on pacing. I'll have to spend some more time running in circles if I want to run a steady 5 or 10k. I would have liked to finish under 40 minutes, but the fact that I could run a sub-20 5k and keep going is pretty encouraging to me that with a gradual increase in mileage and by folding in some more specialized workouts, I should be able to get back into my 2006 shape.