The race last evening went well. I finished without any injuries or falls. I did have one misstep where I aggravated my left big toe injury that has been present over the last 18 months. It was a dry course with the exceptions of 2 or 3 mud holes that surprised a few people in the dark. I almost fell twice, hitting a root once and landing on some uneven ground another time. While running at night, you have to stay concentrated on feet placement at all times. I started out well, getting past most of the slow runners early. That’s important because on a narrow track you can lose a lot of time behind traffic. There were a couple of sharp hills about 300m long where walking was the only option. My overall time was 1:38:50, which was 3 minutes better than last year, but the course was shorter also. My average pace was 5:60 per km, while the last 2 years it was 5:57 and 5:44 respectively. That means I’m getting slower each year. At the finish I felt like I ran a good race and still had ample energy left. Thinking back I believe I could have upped the pace over the last 7 kms where I settled into a pace that was probably a bit conservative. Here are the numbers :
They claimed the course was 17.4 km. I don’t know where they got that distance. I don’t think my garmin needs calibration. I compared times of several competitors and each had a faster time this year than last so that lends credence to it being a shorter course this year.
In the standings, I finished 61st this year, as opposed to 46th and 52nd in preceding years. In my category, v2, I was 6th out of 21 runners, letting a crazy guy sprint past me in the last 5 meters. Did he think he would medal? So I’ve been 5th, 5th, and 6th over the last 3 years.