Saturday, August 14, 2010

St. Peter's 4-mile Road Race - Results

Overall time:  25:58
Pace per Mile:  6:29.5
Overall Place:  36 (out of 277)
Age Group Place: 5 (out of 17)
Male Splits:  5:51, 6:37, 6:53, 6:37

This was the first evening race (outside of the weekly Back Cove series) so I came into this not expecting too much of myself.  My body performs much differently at 7PM than it does at 7AM.  Even with that, the weather was nice enough to not be a major factor this evening.

The route claimed to be 'downhill at the start and the end' which was true, but on the course are some long, slow inclines that would cause minor problems for people who started out a little too fast. 



Mile 1 had the familiar Fore St. hill to the Eastern Promenade (a route also used by the Irish Road Rover 5K and the Duo Duel relay) in which I easily scaled.  I was kinda surprised when I crossed the first mile under 6 minutes because I thought that the hill would have slowed me a bit.  Knowing that I would pay for it later, I just kept myself at a moderate race pace as much as possible.  Mile 2 would slowly sap my strength, making mile 3 much more difficult than it should have been.  The Fore st. hill was back - this time going down - at the end of 3 miles and I used it to regain momentum and I pushed harder to get through what felt like a very long last mile.

I crossed in just under 26 minutes, so I was satisfied with that time.  There were definitely some things I would have adjusted to run better overall but it was a good race and I'll likely run this one again next year.