An absolutely glorious morning for a cross country race. It rained much of the night but cleared out completely by race time. The event was the Bellevue Community College Invitational. CCs from all over the area showed up plus a few post-collegiate clubs like ours.
The course was in Lake Sammamish State Park. It's about 15 minutes from my house yet it's the first time I have ever been there.
I warmed up along most of the course mostly because the map made it look like a very difficult course to navigate. It would have been had I not warmed up on it. The entire course was very flat.
The gun went off at 11am, a very late start for a marathoner. But it was nice to sleep in a bit.
The first mile was over thick grass (think golf course rough) and then a bit of pavement followed by some very thick sand. There is nothing harder than running in sand. Fortunately there was only about 50-75 feet of sand. Then we were back on pavement before heading into some well grromed grassy trails that had some very sharp turns. The rain from the previous night made thing pretty slick. I considered wearing spikes but enough of the course was on pavement that all advatange of spikes would have been lost. I crossed mile 1 in fourth place in a time of 5:05. It felt way slower than that and it probably was. Mile 2 was entirely on grass. Even though it was slick, there really wasn't much mud on the first half of the course. Mile 2 came in at 5:00. Mile three brought a bit more mud and wet grass. My good friend Destry Johnson who was in third through Mile 2 slipped and fell during mile three allowing me to gain some ground on him. I passed him right around the mile 3 marker. My time for that mile was 4:59. Mile four was quite muddy and involved crossing a rain-soaked wood bridge that was very slick. It was also a very narrows stretch that woudl prove to be a big benefit in the final mile. Mile four came in at 4:53. Yeah right. With just under one mile to go, I moved into 2nd place. He was from one of the CCs in the area and I learned later, one of the fastest high schoolers the year previous. I passed him. About a minute later he passed me. I have a rule...don't pass somebody unless you plan on staying in front of them. So I passed him back. He tried to re pass me but the stretch was narrow and I anticipated his move and blocked him from passing. Once that happened, there was about .50 miles to go. With a quarter mile to go, first place was out of reach for sure. I looked back and the CC dude was trying to put a kick on, but I racheted it up a bit and beat him comfortably. Finishing time for the 8k was 24:41. That would have shattered my 8k PR but I'm smarter than that. My first question to the race director was "How short was the course?" He said he didn't know yet. With Cross Country, I don't think distances are all that important because time doesn't really matter. It's all about place. My watch said 4.86. 8k is 4.97 so according to my watch we were about 200 meters short which would still make my time pretty good. My 8k PR is 25:03 and my adjusted time for the race today would have been about 25:20. So I was very pleased. Good to be running cross again. | 