August 1989 - Looking back

August 1989 – 25 years ago:

I had a solid month of training and racing with 435 miles and four races. I kicked off the month with a win at the first Salem 10 mile trail race. The race was an out/back run from the Salem town line to the Derry town line on the (then) abandoned rail trail. The trail is now improved and paved and occasionally has a 5k race on the Windham section. I tried to run the race as easy as possible and still win as I wanted to race well at the GLRR 2 mile series a couple of nights later. I hit the turn in 27:28. I stuck with Eric Beauchesne until about 6.5 miles, letting him do most of the leading. On the way back I kept it as easy as possible until the last three miles (15:10) and pulled away to win in 53:29. Beauchesne ran 54:19 and Dean Kimball took third. Petey (Steve Peterson) placed 8th in a solid 57 and change.

 Three days later I headed to the track for the weekly summer track 2 mile series at Cawley Stadium. Pat Sweeney and Brad Hurst ran with me through the mile (4:29) and I pulled away for a win in 8:56. It wasn’t even close to the series record that Bob Hodge ran (8:52), but sub-9 at a weekly series track race is nothing to sneeze at. The following week we closed out the summer series with a Mile. Dave Cremin and Bob Hodge took the early pace and we rolled through quarters of 65/64/65 (3:14 at ¾). I made a move with 300 to go and was able to hold them off with a 61 last quarter to win in 4:15. Cremin ran 4:16 and Hodgie was third in 4:17. Not bad for a weekly club series! I squeezed in a couple of hard workouts during the week with a 7 mile tempo run at 5:10 pace early in the week and a half, 3/4 , mile, 1.5, ¾, ½ (2:16/3:25/4:38/7:00/3:24/2:14) late in the week. Art Demers helped me in that workout taking me through half-way on each interval.

 I closed out the month on the 26th with the Exeter Kiwanis 10k. The field of over 600 runners was stacked. I was in the lead pack through four when things broke up. Andy Ronan took the win in 29:15, I rolled home in fourth place at 29:35. Rex Wilson was 2nd in 29:20 and this was the first time I’d raced Eric Morse (29:31 – 3rd place). Hodgie took 5th in 29:49. Others of note: Paul Hammond 30:25 and Freddie Braz 31:00.