The 15K is my favorite distance, and I like to approach it as 3 separate 5Ks. Setting goals for each 5K is a good way to keep track of how I'm doing, although in this case I wanted to do even splits--19:40 for each 5K.

The first 5K was a straight course along a slowly rolling road. I was going at "conversational pace" I guess, because I was talking to this guy while I pulled a pack of about 8 runners. My leg soreness went away after a couple of miles, thanks to endorphins, and these miles were faster than my goal, which was 6:20/mile.

Mile 1: 6:08
Mile 2: 6:12
Mile 3: 6:14
5K split: 19:17 (23 seconds under my goal).

For the second 5K, we turned off the road and went on some kind of bike pathy thing. It was roughly a loop, but it was more annoying than that because there were lots of 90-degree turns everywhere. It was flat, but the turns slowed me down a lot. I decelerated for each turn, as is normal, but my sore legs were so flat today that I had trouble accelerating out of the turns. No spring in my step today. By now my little pack had strung out. One guy was 150 yards ahead of me, and another guy was 10 yards behind me. I really fell off the pace, but the guy behind me never challenged me and instead was content to let me keep doing all the pacemaking. I would have liked it if he passed me so I could pace off of him, but no such luck. My times were really slow.

Mile 4: 6:32
Mile 5: 6:31
Mile 6: 6:37
10K split: 39:37 (17 seconds over my goal)

I decided to turn the heat up for the last 5K for two reasons. First, I needed to make up some serious time to reach my goal. Second, I didn't like having a guy running behind me for so long. He was creeping closer to me, so I was worried that he would pace off of me and then pick me off easily near the finish. So, I had to get rid of him well before the finish. This section started with a couple uphills and then was flat and straight for a long time. Right when we hit the straight flat part, I told my hamstrings to kick it into high gear. The guy ahead of me did too, so I couldn't close the gap on him right away. The two of us did catch and pass some other guy, and after about a mile I built up a nice lead of about 100 yards over the guy who had been following me. We triathletes are good at going fast on straight, flat courses.

In the 9th mile I pushed the pace even more, and I started to close in on the guy who had been ahead of me for so long. When we reached the last hill (see my warmup section), I was about 20 yards behind him. Now it was time to use my finish line knowledge to catch this guy. I attacked the hill, closing the gap to 10 yards, we passed the 9 mile mark, and then we hit the gravel section. My stomach was dying from the hill. It was a real bad nausea/can't breath sensation, but I had to keep pushing. I had hoped that the hill would have exploded the guy in front of me, but he stayed in one piece and maintained that gap. I was running out of space when we hit the spot where I planned to start my sprint. So, I gave one final surge, caught him in about 10 strides, and then ran away once the finish chute was in sight. He put up a heck of a fight, but he didn't realize just how much strategerization I had put in this morning.

Unfortunately I couldn't make up for the damage of the early miles. No sub-59 for me. But, I did set a PR, and it's nicely positioned to be broken next summer. And I got my third-place age group award--finally.

Mile 7: 6:21
Mile 8: 6:22
Mile 9: 6:12
Last 0.3: 2:03

Nothing. Well, do the middle miles faster, but I'm a victim of circumstance.

I ate and drank some stuff real quick, then found a nice piece of single-track to jog 1 mile on. Jogging really helped me, I think. I returned to the finish line to stretch, but, see, I was sporting some real Daisy Dukes today, so not all stretches would have been family friendly. I did the ones that were rated PG though.

Eventually I got a massage, and it hurt like hell.


My muscles just weren't fresh for this race. Yesterday I tried to jog 2.5 miles and I thought I would die. I'm actually surprised I did as well as I did.


Pros:

Post-race food is abundant and delicious, and the post-race activities are good. They give free massages and have a pretty-good band playing.

The course is mainly flat, so it's a good one if you're interested in a PR.

Most of the goes along the waterfront so it's scenic.

It's a rare opportunity to race the 15K distance.

Cons:

The constant 90-degree turns are annoying and make the course seem tedious.

The local runners cut the course at every opportunity, sometimes very significantly. They pretty much run whatever route they want, whether it's on the course or not. This was a problem when I did the race in 2006, and it's still a problem this year. It really makes the Fairhaven Runners look bad.