It has been a long rocky road since getting injured at
the Baystate marathon back in October. I’ve been able to train some but
had a few injuries over the last 5 months. I finally turned the corner a
few weeks ago thanks to the miracle workers at Pinnacle Physical Therapy (in
lovely Plaistow NH). Two weeks ago, I started adding some short
speed-work to test my hamstring and progress was made. Finally, it seemed
like I was ready to race this weekend. The weather did not want to
cooperate. The few Sunday races available were either canceled or
rescheduled due to the predicted snowfall. I had an email discussion with
(dreamy) Jim Pawlicki about the Malden 5 mile. It looked interesting with
an early morning start time that might get it done prior to the snow. On
Saturday night I realized the race had reached its cap, so I would not be able
to enter. I went to sleep figuring I’d check the weather in the morning
and either take a shot at the Lowell 5m (which ended up being cancelled) or
just get out the door and do a “tempo run” from home.
I got up at 5am to check the weather and while also
checking my email found out that Jim had an extra entry to the Malden 5m and it
had been transferred to me! Okay, that was settled, and I still had about
an hour to get my race gear together and get out the door. I met up with
Jim at the Stop & Shop parking lot about ½ mile from the start/finish of
the race. We had some time to chat and discussion centered on how bad it
was going to be out there. Would we beat the weather? Would we be
weaving all over the course passing ½ marathoners who were doing five of the
2.5 mile loops? What mistakes would the race organizers make (it being a first-year
race)?
We headed out for a warm-up/course preview at 7:45am
while the ½ marathoners cruised along already 45 minutes into their race.
The course had a lot of turns and potholes. You really had to be
alert. There was only one minor hill (down at the start and up at the
finish) otherwise it was pretty much dead-flat out there. It was 32
degrees and breezing when we finished our 3 mile warm-up.
I switched into race flats and decided I’d be okay
without tights but did choose to go with 2 light long-sleeve tops and added a
CMS hat and gloves. We jogged over to the start and then continued to jog
around a bit as people were still coming up the road to the start despite it
being 8am (start time). They only started a couple of minutes late.
I got into the second row right behind Jim. My goal was 32:30 or better
(6:30 per mile pace) based on the 5k I did on the treadmill last week.
The final instruction before the gun went off was for us to be careful when we
got onto the loop proper as we’d be running into ½ marathoners who were going a
lot slower than we’d be going (good advice).
Thirteen hundred took off on the first downhill into the
2.5 mile loop. I took a count at the first turn and was around 12th
place. After that we started passing ½ marathoners. I would end up
passing 644 of the 859 finishers in the half marathon and another 250 of the 5
mile runners would be caught before they got onto their second lap. That
meant a lot of zigging and zagging. It certainly kept my head up and my
mind working. Just guessing where someone would go, and the relative
speeds of different groups was enough to keep me occupied. A few guys
went by me as I found the right pace for me, but by the mile I was around 15th
place and locked into a good battle with a younger guy. We would end up
running the final 4 miles together. I never caught anyone, and no one
passed me after the mile.
The course did not have any splits marked and my Garmin
has not been working well lately. The half-mile splits I was getting were
all over the place. Maybe the buildings were blocking the signal? I
didn’t worry about it and just worked on maintaining whatever pace it
was. On the downhill heading into the second lap my left quad started to
hurt (a lot). I’m not sure why, maybe I was favoring the left ankle a
bit. Anyway, it didn’t really slow me down. We continued to run
back and forth and now the snow was flying and the road was getting
slick. The potholes were harder to see now, and you had to be extra
cautious going around people. I almost came to a dead-stop at one point
when a lapped runner decided to move left instead of right and nearly took me
down. It fired me up a bit and got me up the final time on the little
hill. I just out leaned my competitor at the finish line.
Jim and I grabbed some water and hobbled back to the
cars. I went out for another snowy three miles hoping to loosen up my
quad. Jim’s knee was pretty wonky, so he chose to get warm in the car.
Initial results had a ton of mistakes as it appeared that
some decided to just run one lap and then finish! I believe I won the 50+
and Jim took the 40+. The results below seem to be correct (I did some
editing myself).
1 27:28
5:30 Curtis
Trueb
M28 Melrose MA M2129 1/145
2 27:34
5:31 Patrick
Driscoll
M30 Weymouth MA M3039 1/194
3 27:51
5:35 Jon
Cusick
M28 Somerville MA M2129 2/145
4 27:54
5:35 Zach
O'Brown
M32 Boston MA M3039 2/194
5 28:02
5:37 Brian
Cohen
M28 Mansfield MA M2129 3/145
6 28:05
5:37 Christopher Knighton M30 Allston
MA M3039 3/194
7 28:24
5:41 Joe
Shaw
M37 Belmont MA M3039 4/194
8 29:13
5:51 Chris
Furnari
M32 Brighton MA M3039 5/194
9 29:29
5:54 Francois Paupier
M23 Brains OH M2129 4/145
10 29:30
5:54 Brendon Campbell
M34 Medford MA M3039 6/194
11 29:32
5:55 David Terwilliger
M30 Newton MA M3039 7/194
12 29:45
5:57 Brian
Axelrod
M29 Boston MA M2129 5/145
13 29:48
5:58 Doug
Ianuario
M33 Malden MA M3039 8/194
14
29:50 5:58 Jim
Pawlicki
M44 Lynn MA M4049
1/77
15 30:27
6:06 Mark
Hagopian M36
Newton MA M3039 9/194
16 31:06
6:14 Brian
Wilson
M30 Boston MA M3039 10/194
17
31:14 6:15 Dave
Dunham
M54 Bradford MA M5059 1/45
18 31:14
6:15 Bing
Xia
M31 Brookline MA M3039 11/194
19 32:07
6:26 Stephanie McNamara F30
Somerville MA F3039 1/310
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