Twilight

NB twilight track meet – I couldn’t find any races that looked interesting for this weekend. Dan had mentioned at the River that he was doing the Twilight meet to get a 5,000 time (for the All-Terrain Runner series).  I don’t like night races but it looked like a good low pressure place to get some leg turnover.  It may sound funny calling a big meet like the Twilight race “low pressure” but it was for me since I knew going in that I’d be among the slowest runners by a LONG way.  Dave Lapierre joined in the fun as he is also doing the ATR series, and by looking at the seed times we could see that we’d all probably be running alone and most (if not all) of the field would lap us.

 

We got there early and watched some of the action before heading out on the road for a warm-up.  It was a little breezy and a bit warm but really not too bad for racing.  I thought we gave ourselves plenty of time but by the time we got back and changed into race gear it was time to go.  I guess missing doing some strides was okay, I was pretty hyped up nervous/excited.  Something about track racing just flips the adrenaline switch.  Maybe it has to do with how exposed you are, there is no hiding on the track. 

Everyone lined up and me, Dan and Dave hung back.  We all wanted to start in the second row since everyone would be zipping out, it’d still be a clean start.  So it was. Boom everyone just shot off and by 100 meters Dan was off the back of the last 3 guys, I was off alone behind him, and Dave was on his own behind me.  I had a goal of running under 17:40 so I was aiming to run 85 seconds for each 400 meter lap.  I was a step or two under at 400 and felt good but kept telling myself to wait until half-way and if I felt better that would be the time to pick it up.  Usually that is the point where you really start to question the wisdom of signing up for a 12.5 lap race.

 

I rolled along pretty steadily, hitting the 1600 (metric mile) in 5:36 and 3200 (metric 2 mile) in 11:11.  Around that point I noted that Dan was coming back a bit (he’d had almost a full straight-away lead) so I focused on trying to reel him in.  Last year at the USATF NE track champs, I’d beaten Dan by 1 second catching him in the final 100 meters.  I dug down and started closing the gap.  With 600 to go I thought I might have a chance but Dan was also thinking about last year and he snuck a peek.  He found a little something extra and was able to keep me from catching him this time.

Along with Dave La we took the last three places (17, 18, 19) in the race but also took it for what it was.  D-La set a 50+ PR and ran a minute faster than his 5,000 last year, Dan was top “senior” in the race and held me off, and I ran my best time this year and came in about 15 seconds faster than I thought I could run.  Our combined ages also topped the first seven finishers combined age ☺

 

Dan and I finished off the night with a scenic loop along the Merrimack River and the Lowell canal river walk. 

 

Senior Results:

1 Dan Verrington CMS 17:22.66

2 Dave Dunham CMS 17:24.32

3 David Lapierre CMS 19:54.38

 

Overall

1 Dan Milechman Harvard 14:34.57

 

11 Scott Leslie CMS 15:44.39

13 Alex Hall WRT 16:01.20

 

Splits

400 Splits		1600 splits	Kilometer
1:24.3
1:24.4	2:48.7
1:23.9	4:12.6		3:30.7
1:24.1	5:36.7	05:36.7
1:23.4	7:00.1		3:29.5
1:23.4	8:23.5
1:23.6	9:47.1
1:24.2	11:11.3	05:34.6	3:29.1
1:24.5	12:35.8
1:23.9	13:59.7		3:30.5
1:23.9	15:23.6
1:23.0	16:46.6	05:35.3
0:37.8	17:24.32		3:24.7
17:24.32