Walpole 10K Race Report

Short and sweet, as there's not a lot to say. I felt a bit heavy-legged on my warmup, which, accompanied by a few garlicky burps from the ciabatta bread I ate this morning, didn't necessarily augur for a fast day. My goal anyway was to go out in a pretty-conservative ~6 minute pace and practice what I hope to do at Baystate: slow start, steady progression, strong finish.

I usually use the Lap Pace setting on my garmin because the reading is more stable, but today, since I was using it as an upper-bound limiter I set it to show instantaneous pace. Shortly after the start I remembered why that setting is annoying (7:26! 5:18! 6:29! omg!), but it did more or less serve its purpose. After reeling in a few enthusiasts over the first 1/2 mile, I settled in behind Bob Ruel of HFC and ran with him for the first two miles (though I didn't recognize him as he was out of singlet).

I started to split from Bob around the rolling hills that go by the golf course, and from then on I was on my own. I'd see the blue singlet of the eventual 3rd-place finisher bobbing ahead of me on some of the long straights, but he was well out of my reach. I did succeed in accelerating in the back half, and felt consistently strong throughout. I was laboring a bit on the last hill, but not really suffering--honestly, I flogged myself harder on last week's track workout (which, perhaps not coincidentally, was 5x2K at 6min pace).

I feel like if I had been 100% in racing head-space and not two days of a failed 20 miler I might have contended for 3rd place (or at least given him a scare), but as it was I glided to an uncontested 4th, in 38:06.

Served its purpose as an early tune-up for Baystate, but otherwise unremarkable performance.