Trail Run warm up/down 12:06 [1]
slept:6.0 shoes: Adidas a3 Prowl
Warm-up jog for the race. Feeling pretty good.
Trail Run race (Connecticut College Invit) 29:56 [5] 5.0 mi (5:59 / mi)
shoes: Adidas a3 Prowl
Race at a park near Connecticut College in New London, CT. Felt great going out and ran 5:30 without too much effort, but couldn't seem to hold onto that pace. We ran through a marsh in the 2nd and 4th miles and it was pretty nasty and muddy, and everyone slowed down in there. I was able to pick it up again on the third mile, but after the second time through the marsh I started to cramp up, just when I was starting to try to push the pace again and that pretty much killed my race.
My goal was to not run any miles over 6 minute pace, but the swamp killed that. I also wanted to hit 29:30, but I was so slow in the last mile due to my cramp that I couldn't get it. The weird thing is that I still managed to run 5:49 on the last mile but I really felt like I wasn't running that hard. Who knows though...
Anyway, it was definitely a PR (previous best on 5 miles was 30:30) so not a bad way to start the season. Should leave room for improvement.
Here are my mile splits:
1.) 5:32
2.) 6:12
3.) 5:50
4.) 6:32
5.) 5:49
Trail Run warm up/down (Cool-Down) 21:11 [1]
shoes: Adidas a3 Prowl
Cool-down run after the race. Felt pretty tired at first, but much better towards the end.
Note
Here are results from today's race. Looks like I placed 230 out of 388. Top half would have been nice... Not bad though considering most of the schools were Division 1.
Orienteering (World's Hardest Night-O) 1:37:58 [1] 6.33 km (15:29 / km) +135m 13:59 / km
shoes: Integrators 2005
Well this was definitely the hardest Night-O I have ever done, and I don't think it will be easy to beat. It was a blast though. You had to be extremely slow and careful, picking off just about every boulder along the way and sometimes going out of your way to hit big features. It was a great experience though to have to be that exact. There were a couple times when things didn't look quite right so I spent some time figuring out exactly where I was even though I had a pretty good idea. In the day time I would have just kept running and relocated as I went, but at night this was impossible. It was really good for me to do that because I sometimes get myself into trouble when I don't stop soon enough when I sense a mistake.
I was really solid (other than some stops to figure things out) until the last control when I started to get a little sloppy and kept running despite not feeling right about the terrain. When I realized that I wasn't really sure about where I was I decided to bail out to a trail right away and relocate. That seemed to work, but it would have been nice to not have to do that.
Anyway, it was great training and a lot of fun. Although the woods did feel a bit spooky at times :)