Cinco de Mayo!

I decided to give up the pre-workout hot tub soak during the month of May (no alcohol this month, either), because I need to use that extra half hour to, you know… work out. But this being the last day of April, I took my pre-race soak with a clear conscience.

It really helped. I was pretty strong and consistent for the first five miles, and being happy with my performance up until that point, decided to turn it up for the last mile to see what I had left in me. Final analysis… I still had “big legs” (sprinting) left in me for the last 0.2 miles to the finish, but my core is weaker compared to this time two years ago and I borrowed heavily on the strength that was there for that last mile.

So I’m going to tweak the gym routine a bit to work abs and back a little more to build back some of that strength. I had a solid performance, a 56:22 (or 9:04 per mile pace). It's two minutes slower than my PR (54:16, or 8:44 per mile pace) from the 2004 Bridge to Bridge event, but my finish here is close to my history of performance results for a 10K. Tells me that I still have plenty to work with. I just need to be diligent. And patient.

After the race, we raced home to watch the race (ha ha), only to find on TV that the Talladega Speedway was under dark skies, and by the time the race had started, the clouds turned on the water and the race was postponed until the next day (curses). So much for an entire day of racing!