The Wrap

I am not sure where to begin. I am back from New York. It is Monday night as I post this. I will go back through friday and the race.

Friday was a cool nice day in New York. The weather forecast for Saturday was cool low 40s with high winds. I was not worried about this. The park would be somewhat protected. I ran an easy 20 minutes followed by some easy stretching. My main focus today was rest. All qualifiers had a mandatory tech meeting at noon just of the park. I met the adidas rep at his hotel and then took a cab over to the meeting/luncheon. I was expecting to have some missing guys. Why would the top guys show up? Everyone was there. It was a long meeting. Flocast has a little video about the meeting. After the meeting we had a few hours to ourselves and then we had to be in the lobby of the host hotel to deliver our bottles for the next morning. So in the end I got a little rest. Not much though. I ate a decent meal and hit the sheets early. I had to be at the host hotel for the bus ride to the start no later than 5:20 the next morning.

Saturday. I woke at 3. I think my body was so used to 6+ hours a sleep that it said you have reached your limit now wake up. I did the normal things before a race and headed out to find a cab. When I got to the headquarters I noticed I was the only one there. I just hung out waiting for 5:20. I entered the first bus. It seemed pretty tense. A few fellows chatting but not too many. Hall entered the bus looking very confident. Sell and Ritz as well as Abdi looked very tense. I concentrated on relaxing and felt I was doing a good job. I tried to tell myself it was just another race. And in the end it really was. We warmed up right outside the today show studios. We changed next to the ice rink where they ice skate on the today show. I was pretty ready. The atmosphere wasn't really that electric. I felt sort of uninterested.

The race plan. I wanted to go out very easy and knew others would also. The course was tough and the wind was really blowing. Almost just like Chicago last year. Same temp and same wind. We lined up for the start and off we went. Most of us weren't ready. Like a New Prague start. We went through the mile in 5:36. Felt like 6:36 everyone was bunched up and tripping over each other. I just attempted to stay out of trouble. I was hoping to hit half in 1:10-1:12 and run about that or a little slower the second half. I ran with a few guys for a long ways. We tried to work together. As we came around the corner and proceeded down the hill to complete our first lap I saw a runner laying face down on the side of the road. Not moving. I immediately thought it was Peter Gilmore. There were rumors that he was sick. He didn't look good in the hotel the night before. Everyone was pulling for him to show up and run a good one. I noticed a few things as I ran by the person on the ground. First he wasn't moving. Second no one was helping him. Now by that I am saying there were several medical people around him but it looked like they were done with what they thought they needed to do. Much later I found out it was Ryan Shay and he had passed away running just after 5 1/2 miles. More on that later.
Our little group proceeded to run through half somewhere in the 1:11 range. I felt ok and was working both sides of the park. If you notice on some peoples splits there are definite differences in sides of the park. The west side or the side that the finish is on had a lot of really large hills both running up and running down. The east side had the wind at our backs and was a bit more forgiving. I was leading our pack through all of the hills and then on the parts where I thought we could make up some ground. We were closing on some guys but not enough. In the end I didn't really die. I just sort of faded. I felt ok but the wheels were slowly coming off. I had a very big stomach ache from a large buildup of urine that I couldn't expell. I passed a few people late but was well short of where I wanted to place.

I am relieved this is over. I am very happy to have made it. I have a few points to make here. I keep thinking about some things Joe Keillor told me a few years ago. Joe used to travel to US champs races around the country. He quit doing it for a number of reasons. He said he was tired of banging away and not making any waves nationally. Now mostly on talent he can dominate most races in this state if he can train half as much as us. My point here is this. I have done what I wanted to do. I ONLY wanted to qualify. So the last year was the icing on the cake. Some people around me have implied that I had a bad race. I don't agree. It really wasn't that bad of a race. A tough course with very few PRs. Given my goal I would have had to run around 2:23 to be satisfied by my place.

I haven't analyzed my training from this year yet and maybe I won't. I have the feeling I was about 2 weeks over peak.

I didn't do well with the New York size. I really hated it there.

To close this long rambling blog. I am not sure what the future holds for me in competitive running. I am leaning towards going out on top. This is where I would end. I will always run because I enjoy it so much. I just don't know what is left out there for me. Another run at the trials? Why? I have already been there. This is my final blog. Thanks for those who have read it. In the end I am still not sure it helped me.