Choose Your Battles... Win the War...

Runners World outed my philosophy a few months ago. Pick races that no one does and you'll look and feel great. I learned this at the annual Blueberry Festival 5K in South Haven a few years ago, and took the philosophy to other local races like Race for the Egg, Dirty Duathlon, and the Des Moines Winter Games Snowshoe race. It may not be the prettiest philosophy... but at least you can run your own race and earn some props and schwag along the way.

After completing the trifecta for the Egg, I was harassed into doing a real race instead of "looking for races that no one else knows about." C'mon... I thought everyone snowshoed last winter!I ended my "mini-taper" per Tony Stewart with the Friendly Sons 10K in West Des Moines. After breakfast, cleanup, Mandy's run and play with the kiddos, I suited up and rode the Fujina Tri Machine down to 63rd & Grand to sign in. Said 'hi' to everyone, then rolled over to Mike & Jesse's to leave my rig and swap to race gear. I jogged over to the start to hear the announcer say '10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1!"

I queued right in with the top twenty through the first turn, passed mini-Melinda and shouldered up with Pat Riley. JJ Bailey was already down the road with X-man Louis DeWild. We covered the first mile in just over 5 minutes... er, 5.30... mebbe 6... because they had three markers out. Grrreat. Into the crosswind, I burned a match to go with the purple shirt dude, which was stupid.

I should have stayed back with Pat. He passed me going into the residential section off of E.P. True and left me for dead. At least Tony found me and got a good picture.

Turning into mile four, I accidentally ran off course, as I was summing up my courage and mental stamina to bear down for the last two miles. Unfortunately, breakfast had another opinion and was trying to make it's way back to the top.

Pulling through Vine, I was passed by Jesse, on her way to do taxes, who yelled I was in the top-10. On Grand, I made the deal that I'd hold constant through the final rollers and pick up at the top of the hill, sprinting downhill. Don Wells caught me at this point and made some unintelligible comment about youth, so I picked it up and left his old-man butt for dead.

I think I had a box of matches hiding in my shoes, because the Mizuno racing flats were on fire... still surprised to this day there were no blisters. I cut the line at 39.12, good for 12th.

I haven't run a road 10K since college, so this is a new PR by over three minutes, I guess. I'd have to look it up, but my 5K PR from South Haven, MI stands about 17.49. Some work to do to pick up the speed again, but this was still March...

Lessons on the day:
* 10K is longer than 5K... so run accordingly and burn the matches later. Build a fire the last mile.
Get to the damn starting line before the pistol is in the air. I was barely out of the porta-potty at South Haven before the gun went off last year.
* Stretch after the race and get some food and drink in the body. I think I waited too long for all of the above.
* Enjoy the mini-peak... which I did... time to get back to work, finish the MIS class, buckle down at work, then get some endurance and speed built up in April.

Apparently JJ didn't finish. Too bad.

In other news - Nick Frey (www.nfrey.blogspot.com) got a heckuva shout-out in this issue of VeloNews. He got props for his Sol Cycles brand in the online version a few weeks ago. I wonder if Iowa native Kevin Hankens had anything to do with that...