Dover Renaissance 5K

At some point, it had to get done, and the longer I waited, the harder it would be.

I had not run a short race all year, so on the morning of Aug. 10 when I showed up in downtown Dover, I was nervous.  My friend, Gavin, later that afternoon, asked why I would be so nervous.  I was no stranger to 5Ks, plus I had been doing marathons, so three miles should be nothing.

Oh, if it were only that simple.  

I explained to him that the goal of short races is not to run it and finish, but to run fast.  And even though I had done dozens of them before, every race is different and each one comes with its own set of expectations.

For this race, the expectations were low, no question, but it was important to find out if I still had even a little shred of the speed and endurance I exhibited three years ago when I nailed my huge 17:38 PR.  At the go signal, I burst onto West Blackwell Street for a flat straightaway that lasted almost the entire first mile.  The cool morning air was already being burned off by the sun, which had come out and started blazing just before the start of the race.

The turn onto Salem Street sent us onto a bridge over railroad tracks, the course's only hill.  It was steep enough to cause some folks to slow down and it put me right back into the mindset of the old days (when I actually did hill training) - make the move and pass people on the hill.  I did so and, on the other side of the bridge, I hit the first mile mark with a 5:49 - my fastest mile since December!

But despite the flat terrain of Orem and Watson drives, Harrison and Wilson streets and Harding Avenue in the second mile, there was no keeping it up.  A 6:12 second mile was all I could muster.  

I was, however, in fifth place and closing in on the two guys ahead of me who were running side by side.  A big push in the final mile could get me third!

After powering up the hill again, I managed to get next to them on the straightaway back along West Blackwell Street even pulling ahead for a brief moment before falling back again.  

As I did so, the guy to my right - Matthew Rorigue - turned his head and let out a bunch of spit.  Come on, man.  Moments later, he did it again, showering my lower legs with his saliva.  What a jerk.  Barely able to breathe, let alone speak, I blurted, "Stop spitting on me!"

"Sorry," he said, but that is nonsense.  He saw me right next to him.  He had to know I was there.  What an inconsiderate jerk.

I was not next to him for much longer anyway because I was fading fast.  My third mile was a 6:13.  Matthew and the other guy, Patrick Neighbour (who squeaked past Matthew with a fraction of a second difference) went ahead and I rounding the corner into the finish line with a 19:03. (See the full results)

OK, so here are the cold, hard facts: The only other times in the past decade that I ran a 5K that took longer than 19 minutes were the windy 19-degree day in January 2018 and my first race after being sidelined for six months from back pain in June of 2015.  Despite being almost 45 years old and having run four marathons within seven months, that data hung over me pretty heavily.

But, thankfully, I had my wonderful wife, Gloria, right there on the sideline, pep talking me at the beginning, cheering me in to the end and reminding me afterward of all the things for which I should be proud (not the least of which being fifth place overall and tops in my age group!).  

She was right, of course - I should be proud.  I shook off the rust, ran the best race I could and, most importantly, got my feet back in the game for more short racing.  I am going to train hard for the next eight weeks and see what I can muster up for an October 5K.  Whatever happens, I know I continue to have my heart in my soles and to run like an antelope.

Post-marathon to 5K

Four marathons in seven months.

I have been running races for 13 years and this is the first time I have done that.  With the exception of the first of the four, they were not my best (or my worst, though), but it is still an achievement
of which I am incredibly proud.

There is, however, one huge downside to spending seven months simply logging miles - speed gets lost.  

So after one recovery week following the Mad Marathon, I made it my business to start getting back to the grind of speed training.  That meant returning to Hal Higdon's four-week Advanced Post-Marathon program, which re-introduces speed work into training with weekend tempo runs and mid-week mile intervals. 

I couched the mid-week mile intervals within seven-mile runs, taking the first, third, fifth and seventh miles slowly; and doing the second, fourth and sixth at as fast a pace I could muster.  The goal was to increase the speed of those fast miles each week.  The first week was encouraging as I was off to a good start with fast miles averaging 6:17.  But the second week saw no improvement.  Thankfully, in the third week I ran my first sub-6 mile of the year, but even then, the second two took such a sharp downward turn that my average ended up at 6:09.

During the previous few years, I was doing so much speed work that I could regularly pump out sub-6s.  Now, a little older, a bit more banged up, and a lot more out of practice, I could barely squeak out a 5:59.  In my defense, this was all happening in the blazing heat of the summer.  Trying to do tempo runs and long runs in 90-degree heat can wipe you out.  Yes, I ran 13 miles, up and over huge hills in Boonton, N.J., on the day it was 95 degrees and sunny.

The 5K I selected (with much help from Gloria) for the culmination of the training program was the 21st annual Dover Renaissance Run in Dover, N.J., on Aug. 10.  Luckily, it was the first relatively cool weekend in a while.  I was not going into it expecting much, but with a temperature in the mid-60s and low humidity, I was ready to give it all I had.  

Because that is what you do at the short races - you do not just run three miles.  You lay it all out there.