Flashes of Panic

Two weeks ago, I ran the Beach to Beacon 10K, up in my home state. This was my fourth time running B2B; I’m relatively familiar with the course now, and I think I can run it pretty well. However, the day turned up humid, and despite my doing more-or-less everything correctly, I suffered for it. My plan was to start conservatively to avoid getting “zapped” early on, then ramp up the pace. I started conservatively enough, maybe too much so, but despite passing people throughout the race, I never really picked up the pace. I was disappointed with the time, almost a minute slower than I’d run on a tougher course on the 4th of July, and with my inability to pick up the pace. My coach agreed that that sounded like a “hot conditions” problem.

Rather than mope about it too much, though, I opted to spend the afternoon swimming off my parents’ boat at their favorite swimming spot in Harpswell, where there’s a rope swing and the water was 74°F.

Two weeks later and with some encouraging training on that nice grass loop behind me, I decided I’d sneak in one more race before disrupting my training completely with travel. The Mug Race is a non-standard distance (5.5 miles) and a pretty challenging course, but the day was perfect today: a bit chilly for warming up in short sleeves, but perfect for the race.

I ran this race in my spectacular 2002 year, the year where I won seven races, and while I challenged for the win that year, I wound up out-kicked for second. I decided to be aggressive this year but didn’t expect to contend for the win. But for some reason, the pace for the front-runners never got away from me today. Throughout the race, there were two to six of us in a rotating cast in the front; I never led, but sometimes I was breathing down the leader’s neck, depending on who it was. Sometimes I was about to get dropped, and I’d look back and see people ready to pounce, and push on; sometimes I would struggle up a hill, then decide at the top that the pace was too slow and it was time for me to surge and see if I could drop anyone. (It seldom worked for long.) We weren’t running together, really; it was just that none of us had the legs to make a move that would drop all the others. One guy held a lead of about ten meters for about four miles, but couldn’t get any more and wound up fourth.

There were five of us in contention with a half mile to go, which is just absurd for this race. (In 2002, the leader ran alone until I caught him at 5 miles.) I think I was the one who had dipped into my reserves the most to stay in contention, because I finished fifth, but by less than half a minute. My average pace per mile was about 6:07, which is my fastest race since the track 5,000m I ran in June, and by placing third in my age group (19-39, a tough bracket) I won my second Mug Race Mug. A has four or five of them.

It was a minute and a half slower than my second-place run in 2002, but it was a whale of a lot of fun. I’d do that again.

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