After a very long and runner unfriendly winter, I've been anxious for the spring racing season to begin. Yes, winter hasn't exactly left yet in Minnesota as evident by the soft ice on the lakes and many large piles of snow almost everywhere you look. But temperatures are beginning to climb into the 30's-40's on a consistent basis. The roads are ice free so you can finally race without fear of injury and it's warm enough to wear shorts in a race - provided you wait until the gun is about to go off before stripping down to them.
Several big races take place this weekend in the Twin Cities and the Get Lucky 7k in Downtown Minneapolis is one of them. Sunday's Human Race in St Paul attracts most of the top runners in the state, but the Get Lucky attracts high numbers of participants. Over 5,000 runners this year. Although my winter training has been frustrating in that it didn't go exactly as I had hoped, I was able to do a good amount of speed work and tempo training on my treadmill. Yet, the lack of outdoor training and road running base made me feel a little nervous going into this race. I was only able to squeeze in about 6 long outdoor runs this winter which is less than half of what I typically do. But with so much snow and cold this year it just wasn't possible. This winter my long runs were indoors on my treadmill which ended up being my primary training tool. I'm very thankful for my treadmill, but cabin fever set in a long time ago and I can't wait to head back outdoors to train on a daily basis (early April I hope).
Anyway, back to today's race. My goal was to run under 28 minutes which is my typical summer 5k/10k pace. With this being my first "real" race in over 4 months, I had some question marks that wouldn't be answered until the race began. The early morning was chilly with fog cover and temps in the upper 20's, but the race wasn't scheduled to start until 10am, which gave the sun an opportunity to burn off the fog and warm things up a little bit by race time. A hazy sun greeted us at the start of the race along with a chilly breeze from the south. It was still just 32 degrees at race time.
I wanted to run the first mile around 6:20 and try to hold my pace from there - hopefully through the end of the race. The course started out SE from Portland on S. 2nd St near the river and loops back to W River Pkwy NE to the footbridge heading east across the river which is also the 1 mile mark. I was on pace and feeling good. However the far end of the footbridge turns from blacktop to cobblestone. We then turned left on the east side of the river on Main St which was also cobblestone. I ran this same cobblestone road several years ago in a race and I don't like running on cobblestones at all. It felt like I had no stability and could twist my ankle at any moment. This really hurt my pace in mile 2 (6:40).
After mile 2 the cobblestone stretch ended and I was back on solid footing which allowed me to push the pace again. We reached the Plymouth Ave. bridge (mile 3) heading back to the west side of the river. The final mile and a half of the race took us SE along West River Pkwy to the finish. I could periodically feel the stiff breeze during this stretch of the race as normal fatigue set in. I pushed hard through the finish with a time of 28 minutes flat and a 6:26 overall pace. Had it not been for the cobblestones along mile 2, I think I may have run closer to the 6:20 overall pace I hoped, but I was still happy with my result in that I was able to run the final 2 miles at a 6:20 pace.
Overall I finished 24th among 5,107 runners and 1st among 85 in my age group. I also finished 1st in the Masters Division (men over 40) about 470 runners. First time I have won a masters division in a race of this size. As I said earlier, most of the top runners run Sunday's race in St Paul which definitely allowed me to place higher than normal. However it still felt good to finish where I did and get the first real race of the season on the books. This was the first of 6 races over the next 10 weeks. A tough and aggressive stretch to start the 2011 race season, but I'm really excited about it and hope that in 2 weeks the snow will be completely gone for the 10k Running Opener at Lake Phalen.
Race results
