Rothman and end-of-season thoughts

Early this morning I raced my last race of this cycle, the Rothman 8k. It was a chilly morning with a slight breeze going out along the river and I was hoping to be dragged out to a fast time. I ended up 6th in a 24:20 PR, so it was definitely a successful day. The race was tactical for a road race, with the lead pack, which I was tucked in to, going out in a relatively slow 4:52.

The next two miles were slightly downhill as we went out along the Schuylkill. At three miles we were around 14:25, and the pack was still altogether. I still felt pretty good at this point and thought I was prepared for a surge from the four Africans leading the pack. At the turnaround just after 3 miles, they put the hammer down and left me and another guy in the dust, with a NYAC guy holding on for a little bit. He fell off and the I outran the guy I was with to try and get up to the NYAC guy. I ended up gaining some time on him in the last mile but he had too much of a gap on me and I got 6th by a measly 4 seconds. The top Africans ran away from us in the last 3k, putting 30 seconds on me. 

Now that I'm done my season and made a successful entry into the road racing scene, I'll take a little bit of downtime the week of Thanksgiving and then get back into serious training for the winter months. I haven't decided if I'll race any indoor meets, but if I do I won't try and run really well in them, instead just using them to keep my racing and tactical senses relatively sharp while training through. I'm excited for the training this winter, because this cycle really opened my eyes to what a good, solid strength base can do for my track times. The only thing that I changed from last year to this year was training for the half marathon in the summer, and I ran 40 seconds faster in the 8k this year, so I'm pumped to find out what this will do for my 5k/10k times. 

As far as this season goes, it has definitely been a good one. I PR'd twice in the 8k (last weekend and this weekend), ran a great half marathon debut and won NIRCA Nationals. It doesn't seem like I ran that many races, but I raced 6 times, which is only one less than had I run a regular XC season, and that's with a half marathon in there. I have but one complaint...I didn't have a chance to make NCAA Nationals, and I would've had a great shot this year. So it goes.