Realizing that this is long overdue I'm only doing it so it doesn't seem like I'm cherry picking my recaps. Honestly I'm much more comfortable with a self deprecating review where everything goes wrong than a bubbly review when the training goes off without a hitch and the race is executed to perfection. I mean nobody wants to hear about that nonsense anyway.
So this was the 11th year of the Charity Chase and inexplicably I have now run this race 7 times. Don't get me wrong, it's a great event - well planned, the crowd support is the best you'll find in a race this size, plus where else are you going to go for pizza on a Sunday morning? Beyond that though, it's a half marathon in June where the summers are hot and humid and the roads either go up or they go down. For the most part I run parts of the CC course every week so I know it well. Despite this being the 3rd different course I still had a pretty good idea what I was in for.
The weeks leading up to the race had been really hot and humid. Shocker. I could be wrong but I think summer rolling in is partly to blame. When the warm weather hits mid 80's it feels like 95 and when you layer on the humidity it's a bit smothering. I had my weather reality check back in March at the Tobacco Road half marathon where we were just getting a taste of the 70 degree temperatures. Of course when you're coming of a training cycle predominately in the 40's and 50's a 70 degree morning hits like a ton of bricks. Nonetheless I managed a 1:27 but on a much flatter course so I was a little torn and how to plan for CC.
The course is, and has always been basically two loops. At first glance the first loop seems longer and more challenging based on the elevation but there really isn't much difference in either - at least in my opinion. I was hoping to run something around 1:30 but wasn't feeling spectacularly confident about that. Before the race I had gotten a message not to worry about pace or timing but just treat this as a placement race. So now the only thing left to do was get this over with and get on with my day...
The plan was to start out at a 6:50 pace and then run by feel. The first 3 miles went smoothly enough and things started to shake out. I settled in next to Jon Hata who's a great runner and always fit plus he's good with pacing so I knew I was in good company. We made it up 8th street past the armory and headed back through the start area to begin the second loop. Through about 9 miles our pace was around 6:50 and not far off the arbitrary 1:30 I had in the back of my head at the start.
That 6:50 felt a lot harder than it should have and my idiotic choice to wear a relatively new pair of Nike racing flats was coming back to haunt me. It sorta felt like my left shoe was lined with sandpaper and I was convinced that the bottom of my foot had completely detached. Side note: free pair of 10.5 Nike zoom streaks with less than 25 miles to anyone that wants them. And I know not to race in new shoes but I ran 10 miles in them earlier that week and felt great so whatever...
Blisters aside, make no mistake... the wheels were coming off. However I executed my plan of running by feel to perfection and began to run like garbage -- just like I felt. Once the neighborhood spit us out on lake road I watched Jon cruise ahead while I dropped a 7:36 on mile 10. Two more sluggish miles through the 'new' second loop would follow, a 7:28 and 7:37 before finally closing the last mile at close to a 7:00 pace.
I finished 6th overall with a 1:33 that seemed like it took closer to 3 days. I wasn't thrilled with my time but it was my highest placing to date in a CC race and it sure beat watching as a hobbled spectator like I did last year.
Now a month later I'm headed to Atlanta to run my first Peachtree 10K. I'm excited but coming off a beach vacation (beach = +5 lbs) and a grumpy foot courtesy of a track session last week where I tried to make up for lost time. Nothing that will land me back on my favorite doctor's patient list but enough to temper my already fragile confidence. But I will be up front among 60,000 runners celebrating Independence Day with a scorching 6.2 miles through Buckhead and regardless of how fast or slow it's another day in the journey that I'm not taking for granted!
Congrats to all of the Charity Chase runners and a big thank you to the sponsors and volunteers for making it all possible!
