Another Sidebar Update

Ran the Caring for Kids 5k over in Brockton today. Flat, fast, USATF certified course that ran mostly through the grounds of the VA hospital. This was a big-time PR for me, 18:31, just barely breaking the 6 minute/mile barrier that has been stonewalling me. Good for 6th overall in the small field, 3rd in my age group, and a $5 gift certificate at Dick's Sporting Goods. That's right folks, $5 worth of Dick's.

Friday and Saturday I did not run. Saturday I did some work on the cross bike, fitted a 10 cm stem in place of the longer one that was on there. Took out the spacers too, and the new stem is a 17 degree drop, so altogether the change moved the bars down an inch or so, and about half that toward me. I liked it, but the deep-drop Kore bars are now too low in the hooks, so I'll probably switch them out to shallow drops to keep both my back and Gewilli happy. He'll still be grouchy because I'm leaving the top mounts on. They came on the bike, and there is no way I'm paying for new cables just to get rid of them. I also swapped the chainrings back to 38/47, but the shifting still sucks. As noted by master Ge, with the fd as low as it can go without hitting the ring in the front, the 52 arc of it leaves the tail end way too high, and it fails to push the chain soon enough. This is made worse by the indented part of the inner plate being designed for a ring 13 teeth smaller than the big ring, and thus it never really hits the chain at all. So my options are to take a Dremel to the outer plate so I can lower it (which just makes the latter problem worse), try a bigger big ring, or another fd. I'm thinking option b.

I also mounted up some Michelin Muds on half-decent clincher rims and threw a 13-25 9 speed cluster on there. Since this was a shakedown run, I rode the road mostly, and stayed out for 2.5 hours, ~60k. Felt good too, riding in shorts in October. Sunday morning I just took the MTB over to the running race and previewed the course, after which I rode home, got dressed to run, and drove back over. It's only four miles away. This gave me a bit of a pre-warmup.

Once I got my number and all that, I even did a "real" warmup for a change and ran about 4k. I tried some increased tempo stuff for two telephone pole lengths at a time too, then jogged a bit before heading to the start. The field was not very big, just over a hundred running and a bunch of walkers, but I recognized some of the local masters from other races. Lining up in the front, my plan was to keep it steady and not blow up in the first mile, hopefully taking about six minutes to do so, and then increase tempo from there. This did not work out. I stayed behind a few people, but it seemed easy, so I kept going at their pace. The best pulled away a bit a half mile in, but I was still not too far back, on the heels of two other guys.

Mile one came up at 5:48, and my HR was already 170 bpm at this early stage. Well, this should be interesting... At least it was flat. I focused on a rhythmic cadence, and "pulling my belly button back toward my spine" as I had read about on coolrunning. This does seem to stabilize the pelvis and get more leg drive out of the hips. I just put myself in a trance, tried to breath as deeply as possible, and stayed close to the two others. One of them pulled away, and I passed the other guy just before the two mile mark came up at 11:50. I was in the deep red now, but it's only seven more minutes right? And there was even the tiniest of downhills about a k from the end.

I drew myself up to the next guy just before that point, then just hung on. I freewheeled down the grade and we turned back on to the last road. I'd never been in a running race before where I was actually racing for position. I could still hear steps from behind too, but we had a few seconds. The finish was in the parking lot of a medical complex. Before we turned in there, when I could see the banner, I looked at my watch and it said 17 something. Screw this guy, I thought, I'm running for time. I upped the tempo as far as I could and made the turn in front of him, but then found that the course snaked around two more 90 degree corners before heading back to the banner. I was expecting about 50 more meters but it was more like 150. I still held him off until the last turn, but he came around me going into the chute. I didn't really care, one because I was ready to blow chunks and was just glad it was over, but two because I saw the clock and realized I'd gone a few seconds under 18:36, which is six-flat pace.

Talked with a few of the competitors, and found out they were accomplished runners and multi-sporters. I had a hot dog (they were grilled to perfection and I could not pass it up), then stretched before heading out to cool down. This did not work out either, as after a few minutes my right calf totally locked up. I tried to rub it out (huh-huh) at the roadside, but no dice and I walked back. I'm icing, heat-padding, massaging, foam-rollering, and biofreezing this mofo now, but it's still pretty tight. It doesn't feel serious, but I already sent my friggin' entry in for Canton next week, and I damn sure want to keep preparing. We'll see. Thanks for reading, congrats for making it to the end. Go have a piece of pie or something, it's that time of year.