rr: taconic road runners st. patrick's day 10k

this morning it seemed as if my luck with the rain had finally run out. when i woke up there was a light drizzle and it seemed to linger for hours. from all indications, it seemed as if this would be a wet and uncomfortable race. in addition, for the second year in a row, my daughter couldn't make the race. that fact alone made it lose some of its appeal to me. but, on the plus side, i did want to socialize with my friends; emmy (ctmarathoner), anthony and greg (mysolitude). and, i had to run a minimum of six miles to reach my mileage goal for the week.

rain, or no rain - off to the races (plural, since two races were schedule) we went. in a comic start, we arrived in plenty of time for what we thought was a 10:00 start to the 10k race, only to discover, to our complete chagrin, that it went off at 10:45 - the 2 miler started at 10:00! oops! but in this, we were not alone! anthony was there, laboring under the same mistaken belief that our race started at 10:00! three adult, each incapable of reading and understanding the plain language of a race flyer!

in the meantime, i ran into my old friends, gregg and mark. both were members of westchester track club until they joined a new group, the sound shore runners, that formed up in their town. they were planning to race the two miler. in an interesting twist, gregg mentioned that his reach the beach relay team may need of another runner! stayed tuned on that - i may get to run in my first relay much sooner, rather than later! reach the beach relay is one of those events that's been on my "really want to run" list for a long time.

with all that time ahead of us before the start the 10k, emmy, anthony and i decided to jog the 2 miler as a warm-up. last year i also ran it before the 10k - mainly to pace my good friend john as he ran it. this year john decided to run a competing st. patrick's day race - a 4 miler in fairfield, connecticut. don and kate (ultrabrit(e)) were also running that race. i'm glad we opted to tag along with the 2 milers, because the first person we ran into as we lined up was greg!

greg was running the 2 miler to pace his youngest daughter! he, and his oldest daughter would run the 10k. anthony and i ran the 2 mile loop together. i mistakenly thought the 10k course would be 3 loops of the 2 mile course, with a small dog leg out and back at the start to complete the distance. that was the course layout for the race last year. this year, as we soon found out, the 10k was an expanded double loop of the park. anthony and i finished the 2 miles in 17:04 - a nice and easy 8:32 pace.

i intended to use the 10k as a recovery run, so a pace between 8 and 8:30 was my plan. that is until greg and i ran most of the first loop together in 7:45's! so much for the recovery part of my plan. but it was a lot of fun running with greg - and he trains in fdr park often, so he knew the terrain. the course came as a surprise to me when we didn't turn around on what i thought was the short out and back 2/10's portion. instead we continued on and i was soon in an unfamiliar part of the park.

the surprises continued when this part of the course had an equally tough hill climb! this layout would work out to be tougher, relatively speaking, than the previous one. two hill twice, versus one hill three times - pretty straightforward. so much so that i walked up portions of both hills in the second loop! i finished in 48:24, a 7:48 pace (unofficial). it was a faster, harder, run than i had planned. but, overall, i was very happy with my miles at fdr park. that gives me a solid 72.3 miles for the week. right on target.

after the 10k did a good deal more socializing - despite the seemingly big drop in temperature that converted a grey drizzly morning into a cold, raw afternoon. they had michelobe ultra on tap - which was an initial disappointment because i had expected captain lawrence microbrewed beer. initial is the key word there. subsequently, i stumbled on the captain lawrence beer at the other end of the festivities - being served out of growlers! awesome!

in yet another interesting twist to the day, while anthony and i were drinking the michelobe draft, i met paul. he's a fellow wtc member that found my blog and after the exchange of a couple of posts, realized we'd both be at this race. i'm glad he ventured a hello because i was on the look-out for our team's characteristic blue, brooks singlet. which i would never have spotted since it had gotten so cold that everyone was bundling up!

and the final twist was when greg suggested we make a small sign congratulating a fellow rw forumite ("pudov") that had just run his first marathon! he ran the seoul marathon in an impressive 3:38! so greg found a sharpie, wrote "congrats pudov" on a sheet of paper, and anthony took our picture! when i got home that afternoon i posted it on his rr thread. i hope he got a kick out of our little surprise!

so despite the drizzle and grey start to the day, and the cold weather that blew in later, turned out to be a great day!!

next up, the h.a.t. 50k run in maryland two weekends from now - unless i can squeeze in a very neat 3 miler, the "bunny boogie," next weekend ;)

check out anthony's rr.
check out paul's rr.
check out greg's rr.

here are my race photos.