Ran the Hale Freezes Over 10k for the third year in a row. Always a fun race. I knew going out that I wasn't going to be winning this one, but had hopes for a second place finish. The last two weeks after my 126 mile week, I have been trying to overcome a lot of leg issues, hamstring tightness, calves locked up/cramping, foot inflamation, quad tightness, sore left knee, so have been pretty much tapering and just trying to get the legs back under me for this race. As the gun went off and we headed out the usual young crowd of high school kids who love to tear off into the lead never materialized. Scott Keate slowly took the lead and began to pull away from the pack. At about the .5 mark I heard someone running next to me, and I looked over and it was Clark. He had won this race in October of 2010. There was one guy maybe 20 feet in front of us and Scott maybe 150 yards in front by this time, and still pulling away. I mentioned to Clark that we were going to get our butts kicked, and he asked if the lead runner was doing the 10k, I said yes, then Clark took it up a notch to try to chase down Scott. I wished him luck with that and settled in behind the third place person. Of course these first 2 miles you don't know for sure who is running the 10k and who is running the 5k. There are usually between 1 and 5 5kers in front of me through the first two miles before the head back down 4th north. As we approached the split I noticed the one guy in front of me I didn't know was running the 10k or 5k was kind of listing towards a left turn, and sure enough I was in 4th heading down towards geneva. He wasn't gaining on me anymore and I just hoped that as we hit the up hill I would be able to use that to my advantage again and catch those in front of me. As we headed back up the hill on 4th north I caught the 3rd place guy and was gaining on Clark. I was about 10 feet behind him as we hit the intersection when he attempted to cut the intersection tangent after crossing half way across and the cop directing traffic yelled at him, he put the breaks on to head around the cones and I caught him then, he mentioned how he should have run the 5k since we had a big lead on all the 5ker's, we chatted briefly and I continued on pulling ahead by a little bit. I must have gained on him up the next steep hill and was able to hang on a decent pace until the finish. I ran 17 seconds faster than in October, so still improving, though not as fast as I would like. Guess I need some more focused, faster speed work. My endurance seems to be significantly up since then. I had thought Scott was going to run around a 34:20 or maybe a 33:50, but I made the mistake of telling him I thought that, and as is usually I found his speed button and he destroyed the course in 32:20ish. Awesome race and always good to have your training partner humble you and give you something to strive for. | 