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FLRC Newsletter - September 2004 |
| Another Geezer Report | |
I decided to take further advantage of my injury-free status by running the Fourth-of-July Cazenovia 10-miler this year. Last ran it in 2001, running just under 73 min, for the second fastest time ever in the 65–69 group. I noticed from the race website that the fastest ever time in the 70–74 group, which I am now a member of, was 84:20, by Tom Walnut (whom only the older FLRC members may remember) in 1994. (The race has been run since the early 1970s.)
I thought I should be able to beat this, even without many long training runs, since I went through the first 10 miles of the Vestal XX in 83:29, and Vestal is much hillier. So I aimed to break 80.
The weather was a little humid but not too bad, 70-ish I think. Went through the 5-mile point in 39:12, which was encouraging, since I still felt decent. The strategy in this race is to treat the 8-mile mark as the finish, because this is the highest point in the race.
Miles 6, 7, and 8 are rolling, with a net uphill, so you lose time.
There is a long downhill after that, during which you hope to speed up and recover, and the last mile is flat. So my goal was to hit 8 miles in 64 or better, since I have always run the last 2 miles here faster than my average pace. And that's what happened. My 8-mile split was 63:59.6(!), and the last 2 miles were 7:39 and 7:45, for a total time of 79:23, breaking the old record by almost 5 minutes. So I was happy, even though I felt very battered the rest of the day, and I didn't even consider a short jog on the 5th (did manage to mow the lawn, though). Feel recovered now. The 75-year-old winner broke that age-group record by about 5 minutes, too. Too bad Frank Moore wasn't there to destroy the 80–84 record. Geezers rule! Some of the younger age group records are pretty old. Rick Hoebeke has some of the top times, but he hasn't run it lately I think. Casey's name is in there, too.
Only other FLRC person I saw at the race was Bob Congdon, who finished 2 places and 2 seconds ahead of me. Bob had an off day, with some respiratory problems. Nice picture of Bob finishing on the website. I am almost completely hidden in the picture behind the guy between Bob and me. Too bad more Ithacans weren't there. It's a nice, well-run race (with Champion Chips this year, so the results were out very quickly). Nice atmosphere, and there were 440 finishers in the 10 mile (I was 155th). But it is probably not the best thing to do if you are trying to peak for the Boilermaker. Unfortunately, I'm out of town for that this year.
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