even pace

I ran my first post-pose race today. It was the last cross country race of the season in the local USATF series. I jumped in to help the team that I'm on, even though I'm far from being in form. I figured that I could probably sustain a tempo effort for 3 miles, but the race is 4, so I planned to go out very conservatively and then start to roll. I got a little freaked right before the race because I found out that our club's coach declared me on the A team, and I wasn't at all confident that that was the right move. I hadn't been following race results much and I thought there might be faster women who were declared on the B team. All of a sudden there was this added pressure.

But I stuck to my plan and went out in 7:05 for the first mile, a lot of which is downhill. Pretty much my entire team was ahead of me, and I was feeling a little negative at the one mile mark. I didn't know how many of them I would catch, and I didn't feel especially great at that point. Even though it was kind of slow for an in-shape me, 7:05 is the fastest mile I've run in a long time and it felt harder than I thought or hoped it would have. I started passing some people in the second mile and then in the third mile, people started coming back to me in chunks. The only other split I got was my 3 mile at 21:48, so I actually slowed down too, but most people around me were slowing down more. The last mile was great. I started a kick around a half mile out and rolled on a lot of women. I had a couple of moments where I was thinking shutting it down, but the competitive juices were flowing, and I think I ran reasonably close to my limits. I can't remember my finishing time, but it'll be up on the web in a day or so.

I did a two mile cool-down with my teammates and it was very difficult, I was beat. My right calf was a little tight after the race, but not too bad. I think I lost the pose form on my kick. I was trying to maintain it, but I was pretty hyped up and I was concentrating on passing people and running tangents. Also, there came a time when I wasn't really capable of pulling fast anymore. The race exceeded my pose abilities by a little. Hopefully soreness will be minimal, it's always hard to know until the next day. Anyway, it was fun, and I ended up 4th on the team so the coach got it right. I wasn't too close to my potential, (I was 116th, and I know I can knock off a couple dozen more places if I was in shape,) but the race really fired me up for more training, and that's worth a lot.