First Race of 2008

Plan for today was to do 10 miles today with 5 at LT pace. There was a 9 km "Hair of the Dog" race downtown by the beach which works out to about 5.6 miles so the plan was to go down there and register as soon as possible and then do a quick 5 mile warm-up followed by the race. Unfortunately due to the weather and some snow, I didn't actually get down there until about 40 minutes until start and didn't get a chance to warm up.

So to give you some background (from wikipedia), the "Hair of the Dog" is a short saying for "the hair of the dog that bit you" and comes from medieval times when it was believed that if you were bitten by a rabid dog that you could prevent the onset of rabies by placing a "hair of the dog" into the wound. Of course, we know today that's just silly. In modern times, the "hair of the dog" is meant to be a hangover cure and considering that the race is on January 1st, the race is appropriately named. Supposed the "Hair of the dog" is to refer to curing the effects of a hangover by simply drinking more alcohol. Now that just makes perfect sense!

Anyhow so back to the race. It was windy, snowing and the running path which comprised a paved trail and a boardwalk was covered with snow, and not just that light fluffy stuff, but that dense packing stuff that turns into ice when it's compressed when you step on it.

So the race started and I was moving at what I thought was an okay clip but not so great considering the not so great footing. Passed 1 mile (according to Garmin) at7:23. I was basically following this guy in front of me since he seemed to know where he was going. Unfortunately he was jumping back and forth between running on the boardwalk and running on the trail that runs adjacent to it. He leads me out of the beaches area and we pass the 2nd mile mark at 7:44 which I realize is a bit too slow for my liking. By this point, we're on a part of the trail that I'm familiar with since I've run on it before and so I decide to pass him. The trail then turns adjacent to this side road and I decide to jump onto the road to gain a bit more traction. I hit the turnaround point at about 21 minutes flat where they have these little cups of water, OJ and peach schnapps (hair of the dog, remember...). Grab a cup each of the alcohol and water and head for home. Mile 3 split is 7:32. At this point, I've decided to run on the trail again and the lack of traction is causing me to slow down again. Mile 4 is 7:37. Continue on and pass a couple of people and Mile 5 is at 7:26. I pull up behind this one guy who must have heard me coming cause he then takes off like a jackrabbit and I can't keep up. Finish the last .54 miles in 4 minutes flat or 7:30 pace. Garmin says the course was only 8.9km which could be true considering I have no idea if we were following the right path or not. Not sure of my official time or placing since I didn't try looking for any results after but garmin says 41:45 but it's probably closer to 41:50 since the garmin auto paused when I stopped at the turnaround to drink some fluids. So overall pace was around 7:34 min/mile. This pace seems to be my maximum "running on snow and ice" pace since this was almost the same pace (7:36) that I did a few weeks ago during a 10 mile race with similar conditions.

Afterwards stuck around to eat some food and watch the awards ceremony and then headed home. I still had to do 5 miles to get me to my 10 miles for the day which I did just a little while ago at around 8:45 pace.

Going to try and do a recovery run tomorrow morning to get back into morning running habit. It's supposed to be super cold tonight so it might be that I end up doing it at the gym tomorrow evening.