Weekend Results - Preliminary

Lots of action this weekend, with Savitch at the Run for Animals 5k, Wigglesworth at the PVTC Track Meet, Geoff at the James River Scramble, and Jen and me at the Capitol Hill 10k. Results are in from Savitch and me; still waiting for posting of the PVTC meet and the James River Scramble.

Run for the Animals 5k:
We all know that Savitch loves two things. Running and animals. And animals may even take priority!!! So it is no surprise that Savitch laced them up this weekend for the Run for the Animals 5k in Wheaton, to benefit the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary. Held over a tough course and featuring a distance that is far from Savitch's main focus, the power of orphaned baby birds compelled him to a 2nd place overall finish, behind Andy Sovonick from the GRC racing team, and just ahead of Jon Torrance. In the process, Savitch picked up a tidy check for $100, which he immediately handed back to the animal sanctuary as a donation.

Capitol Hill Classic 10k:
This was kind of a good news/bad news race. This morning, the original plan was to pace oft-absent Dojo member Jen through the race, click through around low 40s, and get in 8 total miles (between the race, warmup, and cooldown). Unfortunately, those plans were nixed when I couldn't find Jen in the swarm at the start or within the first half mile of cruising after the gun. At that point, I looked ahead of me and saw that while the top three guys had broken away, a big chase pack of 10 to 15 guys remained within about 100-200 meters. I decided to see how many guys I picked off by maintaining a steady tempo-like effort.

The good news: I ended up catching a fair number of folks, placed 7th place male, and ran 36:39, which I think is the fastest I've ever run on this particular 10k course. Jen ran a great race, placing 9th among women with a 41:14 on almost no speedwork.

The bad news: Yesterday, PJ and I rolled through a fairly challenging 22 miler, we are looking at a huge training week coming up, and at my advanced age I can't afford to crank on too many easy recovery days. While I didn't completely empty the tanks for this one, it was far far from an easy run. So I'm going to be a bit careful to not overcook this week.

Stay tuned for updates from James River Scramble and the PVTC Track Meet