Old Boney

An amorphous cloud

Hovers below the mountains

Slowly vanishing.

 Tuesday, November 2, 2021

 At the moment I’m in that transition phase where I’m still taking way too much time feeling good about myself from last weekend’s race before slapping myself to get it together and getting back to training and focusing on the present and future events.

 The Old Boney 20 miler, like just about every race, had its share of accomplishments and failures. I failed to hit my time goal of under 3 hours. This year I have not hit a time goal. I’m not missing by much though so I’m not going to write myself off as an out of touch optimist just yet. Next up will be a turkey trot where I’ll give under 20 in a 5k a final shot for this year.

 At Old Boney I did win my age group and came in 5^th overall in a very respectable 3:08. Next month I’ll shoot for an under 3-hour 30k on a far easier course, but with weather and what not…

 I did fall, but with minimal damage and not much of a setback. Otherwise, everything pretty much went according to plan. For the No Name 30k next month I’ll make some minor changes in equipment but will set out to keep the same basic plan and outlook.

 One racing element that was fortified by my approach is that for longer challenging races it’s wise to reign it in a bit at the start. Since Old Boney began at 6:30 a.m. the first 15 minutes were in the dark and all of the runners pretty much cruised and used that as a warmup. And that didn’t prevent the winner from doing a blazing 2:40 and running away from the rest of us mere mortals. Nor did it prevent me from feeling great once I got going and allowed me to work myself into the race where I felt very comfortable pushing the pace and challenging myself to do something special.

 Darkness won’t be an issue at No Name and given that the course is easier, the temptation to gun it at the start is going to be hard to constrain. Once I have more details, I’ll better be in a position to feel if a pre-race warmup is desirable or if I’ll be better off to again start slow and work my way into race pace. But my time and effort level sure felt right at Old Boney so it’ll be an interesting compare/contrast if I deviate.

 Alright already, enough pats on the back. It’s time to kick myself and get back to work.