I have a friend who started running on a treadmill over the winter. We got to talking about some of the races I did late last year and he told me he’d be interested in trying some in 2011. Shortly after that, he sent me the information about this race, held on April 16. At first glance, I thought it was a 5K, not a 5-miler, so I thought it would be a good first race for him.
As the date approached, he then sent me a map of the course. At this point, I realized not only was it 5 miles, but a hilly race with a big climb towards the end. I told him I thought it would be totally fine if he wanted to skip it, but he decided to tackle it.
It was about as tough as I expected. All my runs have been on the south shore of Long Island where it is very flat. I have no experience with hills and that was a bit of a problem for me. I was mostly happy with my performance on the climbs but it was the steep downhill runs that surprised me. At first, I let physics have its way, and flew down the hills at top speed. However, at times, it felt as if I was somewhat out-of-control. Also, my feet were slamming into the pavement pretty hard and I was passing a lot of people. It made me feel as if I was doing something inadvisable and possibly dangerous, so I started to try and control my descent. However, I could tell that slowing myself was using a lot of energy. At this point, I was confused; should I be using more energy to run slower during a race?
I say I was mostly happy with my performance on the hills because there was one really long climb at the end that killed me. From about the 3.3-mile point to the 4.3 mile point is one tough climb up Cordwood Path. This hill kicked my butt. I was running only a little behind my normal pace and then got beaten badly by this climb. I finished at 41:06 whereas I had conservatively estimated I could finish it in under 40 minutes.
Despite this being a tough run, I want a rematch. I fully intend on running it again next year. The post-race spread behind the firehouse was on par with any of the races I’ve done. We waited through the raffle, but didn’t stick around for the awards ceremony because the temperature was only in the 40s and the wind was picking up, which made it pretty uncomfortable for damp running clothes.
My friend finished the race several minutes behind me. Considering he had never run on the road before, I thought he did really well. He noted that since he got the toughest race out of the way first, everything else should seem easy by comparison.
