westport summer series, 9.3 miler: race report

the westport summer series 9.3 miler was my second trip to compo beach in one month! as i mentioned in my previous summer series race report (the 6.85 miler), i hadn't run a race in westport since 2005! not only was this the 2nd one in a month, but i'll follow it up with a third next week at the 10 miler! i haven't spent this much time in westport (and compo beach in particular) since the days when my in-laws lived here!

as for the race itself, it was a training run for me. i'm finishing off in the third of a series of low mileage weeks (30 or so miles). i'm slowly trying to bounce back from hitting the wall - mentally and physcially - three weeks ago. a combination of too many miles, too many ultras, and not enough recovery time in between, suddenly put the brakes on my running. i knew things had hit rock bottom after the joe kleinerman 12 hour run when i couldn't get myself to run an easy 4 mile training run the next day (much less go to mahopac that morning for a 3 mile race/half mile swim biathlon)!

it's difficult to be low-key at a race (even one used for a training run) when you post relatively slow times. i haven't run a 15k distance in 1:19:36 since i struggled to finish the pete mccardle xc 15k in van cortlandt park in 1:19:52 - at the tail end of the flu! it's even more disspiriting when my last one, the colon cancer 15k in central park last march, was a decent 1:07:14. but, one of my favorite lines from bard is, "come what come may/time and the hour run through the roughest day!"

so, further rationalizations aside, here are my splits:

1.

2. 15:36

3. 8:43 24:19

4. 9:08 33:27

5. 8:45 42:12

6. 8:41 50:53

7. 9:54 1:00:47

8. 8:32 1:09:19

9. 8:02 1:17:21

0.3 2:15 1:19:35

i ran the first two miles with emmy. when i realized we were on a 7:45 pace (having missed the first mile marker) i told her it was too fast for me. i didn't expect to run faster that 8:30 miles (and planned to walk the two hills in miles 4 and 7). so emmy went on ahead.

the next two miles were a trip down memory lane for me. as the course went on hillandale road, toward my wife's childhood home, i enjoyed the familiar sites including revisiting some of the same stretches i had done training runs on. just before course turned right onto south morningside drive (a few doors before her house), roy caught up with me and we ran the rest of the race together.

that too was an enjoyable stretch of running. roy was racing an alumni 5k the next morning, so this wasn't a hard effort for him either. we took the remaining 5 miles at a conversational pace - and did walk some of the hill in mile 7. don caught up to us in mile 8 and the 3 of us ran together for a half mile or so. but when we reached the mile 8 marker and crossed over i-95 on hills point road, roy and i picked up the pace and ran the last mile in 8:02.

emmy cheered us on in the last quarter mile, and after we crossed the finish line, we hung out with rob as we waited to hand in our scoring sticks. while we waited for the results, rob and emmy went in the water to cool down. i only saw don briefly post-race since he couldn't stick around. but roy, dawn and i socialized a bit before the results and raffle. rob and emmy made i back for the raffle - but none of us won anything (and considering we all have way too many vintage tee shirts, it was probably just as well).

next up, we'll probably regroup at staples high school for the 10 miler next weekend - if we don't see each other sooner, at the tuesday night waveny park xc races.

here are the my race photos.