Mystic Places Marathon - 10 Mile - Run10 Mile

I was supposed to do the hftd half last weekend and had tapered for that race. I ended up missing the race so decided to do Mystic. However, I wasn't going to do another week of tapering so I just did my normal training (with no swimming of course) and did a long ride on Saturday with Seth and Dan. Therefore, there were no pre-concieved notions about how I was going to do. I just planned to go out at a pace I could hold for 10 miles and see what happened. Dan said he wanted to run with me for ahwile so that was cool.

We start and right away I can tell I have pretty good legs. Whether it will last for 10 miles, I have no idea. Dan decides not to run with me but rather to pass me and probably went sub 6 first mile so I just let him go :) After the 3 mile marker (which was short), I was probably just over 6/mile pace and decided to stick with that. One of my biggest flaws in running is that I get lazy and start over-stridding. Sooner or later this just beats up your quads and is just all around inefficient. So I really focussed on form and made sure to keep my legs underneath me.

I made it through about 6.5 miles feeling great but then I got hit with my chronic cramp. It is just under my ribs on the right hand side. It usually happens after biking and is always on the same spot (I think it is some sort of muscle imbalance which I will have to work on). At this point I could keep the same pace but just had to keep my breathing as relaxed as possible. It never got any worse and didn't really effect my race.

I wish they had better mile markers because I think this was one of the most consistent races I have had. I was pretty dead at the line but never really slowed down. This is clearly the fastest I have ever run over a similar distance.

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Stretched a little and walked up the road to cheer on Dan. Then watched Aaron, Rob, Pam and Polly finish up and even managed to stretch a little.

I was pretty dissapointed when I missed Hartford but this more than made up for it and I couldn't be happier.


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Race management was nothing short of horrific. I did this race 2 years ago and it was fine. This year, they screwed up the 10 mile course, had either missing or hidden mile markers and they were still putting out cones when I was coming back in from the 10 miler. It just missed some really fundamental things.