Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Hartshorne PW...Personal Worst

First up sorry for the tardiness of my entry,it's always tough to write a positive blog entry after a less then positive race.....even harder when your pc has a glitch of sorts so I had to wait till I got back to work to have a glitch free pc to write it,that allows a little more time for the proverbial dust to settle and try and write something tangable about my race and the weekend in Ithaca.
I knew going into the race I wasn't at my best,I'm several weeks away from that but rather than run and hide{maybe that should be don't run and hide I don't know?!!} I felt I owed it to Tom Hartshorne to turn up and honour my invitation,post race I wondered if I shouldn't take a leaf out of my good friend Julie Hayden's book and wait till I turn 50 b4 coming back to honour the invitation,time will tell if that's a knee jerk reaction.

Pre race I felt my best plan of attack was to abandon my usual front running tactics and work my way up from the pack based on the evidence of my recent pb performances,pb standing for pre basics,w/ hindsight I wish I'd stuck to my usual style of running as going to the back of the pack did nothing for me and I only briefly got out of 10th and last place on lap 2 b4 eventually being relegated back there w/in a few laps.
My opening two splits were 37/33 a far cry from the 34/34 I was aiming for and looking at the photos of me during the race not only am I well off the back of the 8th and 9th place runners{I would wind up a full 4 seconds behind 9th place at the finish}but my arms are flopping around,clearly there is work to be done over the next few weeks.

10th in a woeful 4.48.12.is hardly anything to be excited about,however it is an improvement on that lackluster 4.50 I ran at The Armory two weeks ago and if the only crumb of satisfaction is that in two weeks I've made an improvement on my time then hopefully over the coming ten weeks I can keep improving and keep getting faster cos lord knows I need to.
I wasn't alone in below performances,pre race favourites Tony Young and Alisa Harvey both suffered that fate also,prehaps this years races in the elite 40 marked a passing of the torch as Nick Berra and Aeron Arlin-Genet both won as Ken Stone had foretold in his blog on Thursday.
Congrats to my team mate Nick for his win....he now has the club record at the mile after his 4.24.74. victory,how much longer b4 he takes my 1,500m record?
Props also to fellow teammate Cheryl Bellaire who won the womens 50 race.
And to prove there's still life in the old guard yet how about a big hand for my good friend Nolan Shaheed who's 4.57.06. was a world record for M60.

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