Bradford 6km

This was my worst performance this year and I'm not sure of exactly why.  I guess my head was not 100% in it with worries about my foot.  Some days you try to give your best and just come up short and this was one of those days.

My foot felt half-way decent warming up with a big group from Dan's house.  It even felt good doing a few strides before the race (good being I wasn't favoring it too much).  The pack headed out with the 5m racers and those of us in the shorter race mixed in.  I felt pretty decent as I turned the corner at 3/4 of a mile in first place.  There were two guys right on me and one went by almost immediately.  I hit the mile (?) in 5:28, but in another 1/2 mile the leader had pulled 5 seconds ahead.  I hit the 3m mark of the 5m in 9:10 (3:42???).  That was pretty much the end of it for me.  I felt lousy on the uphill from 3-4 and the guy trailing me just sat waiting for the right time to go by.  I drifted to over 15 seconds behind the leader with a 6:06 split (?????).  I still kept thinking I had a shot to close the gap and hold or at least hold on to 2nd place.  The guy behind me had other ideas.  He blew by me in the last downhill 400m and put 15 seconds on me (yikes!).  My final mile was 5:47 for a 21:04 3rd place effort.  My splits were worse last year when I ran the 5m (5:59/5:40).  All in all it was a rough day.  I limped back over to Dan's then headed home and iced my foot for the rest of the day.

Hopefully a week of easy mileage will get my foot back on track.

Pics by Jim Rhoades