Ilanarama!

My expectations for the Canyonlands 5-miler were pretty low. Not only would this be my first race after the disastrous Winter Of Back Injury, I also caught a bad lung-rot virus on March 4th (ironically, the day after I posted about looking forward to this race!) and didn't run for 8 days. Still, I was hoping to win my age group, or at least top three, since except for a few short-distance specialists, the 5-miler is mostly run by people not fit enough to run the concurrent half marathon (which I usually do), so the level of competition is pretty low. I also hoped to clear out the cobwebs and jump-start my fitness with some (relatively) fast running, and get a read on just how out of shape I am.

When my lungs finally cleared, I did a few short, easy runs, and then a test speed run on the Thursday before Saturday's race: I ran an easy warm-up mile, a second warm-up mile with strides, and then held a tempo-ish hard pace for a mile, something that didn't wear me out but felt hard. Based on my recent easy pace, I figured this pace would be something around 8:15, and sure enough, my test mile came out at 8:08. I can work harder in a race than I can in training, and Canyonlands is about 2500 feet lower in elevation, which also gives me a little advantage. So my plan for the race was to go out at 8 to 8:05, hold that if I could for the second mile (which had a nasty hill) and then push as hard as I could without blowing up.

( No plan survives first contact with the enemy )

( By the numbers )