Another weekend, another race. As Ms. Caitlin was away, I woke up at 8:15 for this 10am race, grabbed a bite to eat, dressed up, forgot my watch, and was off.

Temperature was right around freezing with very light precipitation. Unfortunately, the race was on a dirt trail that is on the perimeter of the lake so there was quite a bit of mud to deal with.

As I said above, I had forgotten my watch so I hoped I would be able to find at least one of my three friends who I knew should be at the race and run around the same times as me. Unfortunately, only one was there and she had run 22 miles the day before. I was on my own.

Miraculously, I managed to pace myself pretty well. At the turn-around I was told my time was 24:28 and I finished in 49:18 (6:36 pace). I did run out of gas a tiny bit, but I wasn’t passed by anyone the entire race. Overall, no complaints whatsoever as this was 2:30 faster than I ran my last 12k just a month ago.

I don’t have “rocket sauce” to thank for my performance. Instead, I think it’s all due to track miles, which is weird because I’ve always had speed; it’s the endurance I’ve been lacking. Or maybe it’s just my endurance reaching a new level? Either way, I don’t know, but over the past month or two I’ve gotten kind of ridiculously faster.

With February coming to a close, I of course made my monthly tally of mileage. After today (yes, I needed an extra day to accomplish this), I’ve run more miles in ’09 than I ran through June of ’08. I’m even thinking running 2000 miles for the year might be a possibility (I’ll need to average 177 miles per month for the next 10). It shouldn’t be too tough as I do plan on getting my training up to 50 or 60 miles a week (currently at 30 and my max ever is 50), but “oof” that’s 10 pairs of shoes or $1000. Perhaps I’ll stick with my time-based goals and go for that one next year. We’ll see…

Thanks to Mom and Dad for coming out to support me. They only got to see me at the start and finish, but I made it worth their while with bagels, bananas, and hot drinks at Panera afterward.

Next [scheduled] race is the Fort Hunt 10k this Sunday morning. I’m kind of on the fence on it, though. While I’d really like to run sub-40 (6:26 pace), that’d be a pretty serious effort, it’d be my 4th race in three weeks (my achilles have been sore pretty much all week for the past few and I can tell they’ll be a bit tender tomorrow) and I have now scored my five races for the Snowball Series (not yet updated). Hrm, which I also actually clinched 1st in today (just realized that). Interesting… so with that, I think I’ll just do a long run and save my legs; we’re getting close to the real deal. Regarding the Snowball Series, I really wish Franco had shown up today; he’s been beating me all year, but I think I would have had him today, which would have made me feel much better about winning overall (he’s now only going to end up having four races if he runs next week). Oh well, rules are rules, but it’s not exactly a bittersweet victory.