Sunday, March 25, 2007

A Trip to Mobile and a new PR!

Well Kiddos, this has been a wild week. After spending Monday through Thursday in South Florida, I turned around and made a trip down to Mobile, AL to see Lauren's family. Mobile held their annual Azalea Trail Run 10k on Saturday. So I joined in with 3400 other participants ran the race. I knew by looking at the results from last year that there would be a lot of elite runners at this race. I knew I'd be lucky to be in the top 200. The Kenyans were out in force 9 or 10 men their fighting for the golden ticket. Now Mobile has just about the same weather as Birmingham, maybe a little warmer, but the big difference is the terrain. It's as flat as a pancake. Most of the races you'll run in B'ham find a way of going over Red Mountain which always slows you down. I knew I had a good chance of putting up a decent time, but was concerned because I'd been on the road all week and haven't been able to train. I'll be damned if all that training prior to this week didn't pay off. I started out a little fast, but found my groove and finished in 42:56, a 6:54 pace. A new PR for a 10K by 1 minute and 8 seconds. I kept telling myself to leave it all on the course. Don't have any regrets about pulling back, and I didn't. I felt like I gave it my all. Oh, and yes the race shirt is heinous.
Today, I was lucky enough to have found a Mobile Cyclist group heading out for a 34 miler at 6:15. It's cool to see how friendly cyclists and well all athletes are. There were a few Triathletes out there that I have some common races with this year. It'll be cool to catch up with them later.
Back to the grind again this week. So glad to be home and back to training. Later.

7 comments:

seagull junker said...

sweeeeeet. great job on a speedy PR.
tom riley

Dances with Corgis said...

Wow, nice PR! :) Nice to have you back Matt.

JeffM said...

Great pr- that's flying!! I like that thought "leave it all out there"!

rocketpants said...

Awesome PR!! All the rest from not training looks like it payed off. Keep up the good work.

ZBUCK said...

Dude, you are an animal! Great race. You just convinced me not to do Powerman...I just couldn't handle the butt kicking you would reign down on me!

DV said...

Congrats!

Neese said...

SWEET! a sub 7 avg finish is outstanding! congratulations! and welcome home!