The course was brutal. It was brutally cold (about 0-5 degrees) and was HILLY. I had heard that it had hills, but they just kept coming. A peek at the Garmin indicates that the first 5.7 was all hills. Tough course...
The Hills
So naturally, the first thing that I realized was that I am a horrible hill runner. I am so bad at running hills, that I got passed by A LOT of people, and only managed to pass one person going uphill (and that person passed me going up an earlier hill - so I think it pretty much cancels itself out). My quads were burning, and I was breathing heavier than everyone who passed me.
On a brighter note, either because I don't know any better, or for whatever reason, I made up a lot of ground on the downhills. I think that some people who I was even with in the first 2 miles gained at least a quarter of a mile on me on the hills, but I managed to catch many of them on the downhills. I don't know if running so much with the stroller (slow up, fast down) has changed my running tendencies or what, but the gist of it was a leap frogging type of race for a large portion of the run. I'd get passed on the uphill, and then I'd catch them, or pass them on the downhill. This continued throughout all of the hilly portions of the race.
Goals
I really had no idea of how to pace for this distance, but the Jack Daniel's book said that I should be running 7:45 to 8:00 miles for a race of this distance based upon my 43 VDOT (calculated from my 5K PR). So I started out with a 1:15 "A Goal" and a 1:20 "B Goal."
The Race
I hadn't gotten much good sleep either of the two nights prior to the race, and I had been battling a cold for a week, so I kind of felt like I might not hit my A goal, but I thought that my B goal would be a lock. I started really slow (about 10 min/mile) because the race starts on a fairly steep short decline and a sharp turn to get out of the parking lot and onto the road - and the roads all had a covering of snow from the night before (which, to my dismay, did not change much - almost the entire race was done on a thin snow cover). I don't know how much this impacted performance, but I'm sure that it didn't help anyone run to their full potential. I also opted out of using the YakTrax because of the calf strains that I believe they've been causing me.
I picked up the pace a little after leaving the driveway start - and logged an 8:35 first mile. My second mile was 8:26, but then the hills started to take their toll on me. I progressively slowed (my slowest mile was 10:02 for mile 5) and by that time I was thinking that I just need to finish. That's when the downhills and flats came. I managed to regain my pacing, and logged my two fastest miles for mile 8 & 10 (7:22 and 7:49), but it was too late. I never made up enough of the time that I lost on the uphills, and didn't have enough steam to pick up the pace any faster anyway.
Results
I finished in 1:26:42, with a pace of 8:41. In the couple of days since, I keep wondering how much better I could have done if I was a stronger hill runner. Note to self, add more hill training to my workouts...
The Course
Bitterly cold and damn hilly. Hilly sounds too small, because they were so brutal. The scenery is nice, and the traffic was minimal, so it was a fun run on those accounts. Also, the organizers did a great job of providing refreshments afterwards and a plethora of awards (from non-performance recognition to trophies for the top 5 finishers in each age group). My favorite part of the race was the numerous painted messages on the snow covered roads. They had gone out an painted messages like, "It's all downhill from here, feel like you want to puke yet?, We love hills!," and my personal favorite "Slow?" I would recommend the experience to others, but with a word of caution, do some hill training first.
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