The Lone Gull 10k marks the end of my running season. Unless I get dragged out for the Mayor’s Cup or something.

I ran 31:36 for 12th in the race, not bad considering I have been working too hard this week and my eldest daughter has not been sleeping. That is technically a road PR, but I have the fitness to take down my track PR of 31:21 so it is frustrating not to be faster.

Next year maybe I will have things a little more figured out. The winner was 40, so I have no need to start slowing down for at least eight more years…

…at the Ollie 5 miler. I ran 24:44 for five miles. My 8 km PR, which I ran 12 years ago, is 24:33; this is equivalent to 24:42 for 5 miles. It would have been nice to run three seconds faster and get a PR on the day but I should be basically happy.

I say should because I finished 18th. Eighteenth! 18th! Eight spots behind 10th! Going back five years, there is no year where my time would have been worse than 6th, and at least twice in the past five years that would have been fast enough to win.

Oh well. In eight days I have the Lone Gull 10 km, and then my season is over. And I can start training for skiing. Hopefully I can do better than 18th in all the Eastern Cups this year.

Oh–I want to get a shout out to Chip. I don’t know Chip; I had to look up his name on the results. Before the race today, as we stood impatiently in the rain, a singer braved the rain to perform The Star Spangled Banner. Chip got back from a strider part way through, observed that every single runner was fidgeting impatiently, and stood apart, hand on heart, fully engaged with the song. While my own patriotism isn’t the sort that prioritizes saluting the flag, Chip’s action impressed me.

On October 26, 1993, I ran 3 times 200 meters, 1 times 1200 meters, and 3 times 200 meters as a tune-up for the New Hampshire Class M&S High School Championship race at Derryfield Park in Manchester. This is the earliest such workout I have in my training logs, but even without them I would remember it.

I am not sure why I remember that particular workout, but I tend to assume that workouts I remember are probably effective so I duplicated it today. Hey–it got me on the podium 16 years ago, maybe it will help me get onto a different podium this Saturday…

The 200s, I am sad to report, were slower. Back then I banged out the last two in 30 seconds. I haven’t tried to tap that kind of speed all year. But I ran the 1200 in 3:37 today, seven seconds faster than I was when I was half my current age.

Anyway, now I have two days of easy training and then the Ollie 5 miler in Boston. Two years ago–competing as a member of a running club for the first time–I had a disastrous race. This time, I plan to compete for the win, and my club should be favored in the team competition. My 5 mile PR is 24:42. Hopefully, it is going down.

So, Kris laughs at me when I am in agonizing pain…I break his record for his favorite time trial.

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