This fall I took on a bit more than usual by way of duties. I'm coaching the school's first-ever cross country team and the 12-15 kids who signed up for it. On day 1, we started with 4 kids total, so to fill out scoring boys' and girls' teams was actually pretty exciting. We're young and inexperienced, and I've been thrilled to see them all running healthy and improving tremendously throughout the season. While all of that has been good, I'm realizing just how hard it is to work, coach 5-6 days/week and fit in my own training. I've been running here and there, but at maybe 30% the volume of years past. Lingering viruses and the ilk have also kept my running a bit subdued.
Team Whirlaway ran at the Wayland XC festival this weekend and I definitely didn't feel ready to toe the line and run anywhere close to sub-6 minute pace, so I didn't join them. But then on Saturday night I had a ridiculously good run which has me surprisingly thinking about racing. It was one of those once-a-year,-I-feel-amazing,-just-shrug-and-go-with-it kinds of runs. The temperature was an ideal 50 degrees and the rail trail heading northwest out of Keene was in better shape than I've ever seen it. The trail gradually climbs all the way out of town so the farther you run, the more downhill you can count on for the return trip. I got to 5 miles out in around 31:30 and decided to try to keep a good ryhthm on the way back, rolling 5:42, 5:47 (decent hill and rougher footing), 5:17, which shocked me and at the time I decided the GPS was confused, 5:27 and 5:27 back to the car. Looking at it now, my last 5 miles were 27:40, or 12-ish seconds slower than I raced for 5 miles at the GP event in late summer. That's just silly! In any case, this run gave me hope that I haven't lost tons of fitness. It also helped me realize that I could probably race and have some fun with it even if I'm running only 3-4 days a week. Perhaps this was the glimmer that I need to get back on the horse? We'll see..
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