42nd Bill Luti 5-Miler

Saturday morning was a nice time for a race. It rained all night in NH and was overcast and in the low 70's race morning in Concord.

This race was the last race in the CARS (Capital Area Racing Series) so there was sure to be a lot of fast runners. There was money on the line!!

On the way over to the race I was driving down Rt 395 when I spotted a Bright yellow Xtera in my rear view mirror. The car had Kayak racks on top. Could it be Double J? I must beat him to the race I thought to myself. But when I turned off the highway the Xtera when another directions.

I arrived at my normal, very early time frame. I checked the Pre-entry board and Double-J was not pre-entered. I was first to get my number in the post entry tent and after receiving my number I remembered reading some where that this was a chip timed race and asked "Do I need a timing chip"? The volunteer had a blank look on her face so I asked another person at the Post-entry table. Their response is what I expected "OH SH$#, that's right". Soon there was activity all over the place getting the chips in order with the numbers. I secured mine and headed back to my car to get ready for the race.

After getting all my stuff together, who drives into the parking lot? Double-J. I head over to talk to him and notice that parked along side of him is Dan Verrington. The three of use were joined by Scott Clark on a nice easy warm up run. This gave me a chance to ask questions about the course. They were telling me that the first mile was flat to down hill but mile 2 was a long hill. Then after that it's just hang on to the finish. These 3 guys were all planing to run sub 27 minutes. I was planing to run sub 33 minutes. I guess I would only see them at the starting line.

As we lined up at the start I looked around. Holy cow was there a lot of fast people at this race. I was out of my league, but I was here at the race so I might as well give it a go. Bill Luti made a short speech and fired the starting gun. It was a very quick start with ZERO hesitation between the word "SET" and BANG!!! It surprised most of us.

The first mile was flat, but you could see from a good distance the hill we were going to be climbing in mile 2. It wasn't steep but long and daunting. I kept telling myself to keep my form (as poor as it is) and power my way up the hill. It was working. I was passing a lot of weekend warriors but I was still a ways back in the pack. The hill lasted about 4 minutes and once we crested we took a right into what I think was a park. The road was riddled with pot holes so I had to start focused with every step. We were now running on mostly flat terrain and I was trading places with a couple of people around me.

As I passed mile 4 I knew that I was toast and breaking 33 minutes was out of the question. I just tried to hold my position and head into the finish. I ended up finishing in 33:42 good for 64th place and 7th in my age category. This was my poorest showing of the year based on the % of runners who beat me and the % of runners in my age category who beat me.

After the race I hooked up with the same group I did the warm up with and we headed out for another 20+ minute run. JJ got third place and was trying to decide if he should run a 2nd race later in the evening. He did, and won it outright and was able to run a faster pace in the 2nd race. Way to go JJ!!

Now some good news. On Friday I bought a book called "Born to run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen". I'm only halfway through the book and I'm rethinking my running technique. One of the assertions of the book is that bare foot running is much more natural and that all these over engineered shoes we've been programmed to buy are the cause of many running injuries. They state that because we have all this cushioning on our heel our foot lands heel first instead of it's natural method of toe first. This causes us to throw our stride out further in front of us and not place our feet under our hips and drive from a power position.

So armed with this information and combining it with a speed workout I wanted to do I headed out of work early this morning to get to the track 2 miles away. Once at the track I ditched my shoes, socks and shirt. I steeped onto the infield of the track and began a workout that only lasted 4 minutes but was hell and child like delight at the same time. The workout was to run all out for 20 seconds then run easy for 10 seconds, then repeat this 8 times. I felt like a little kid running on the wet grass. My Achilles felt great, my hamstrings felt great. As I got further into the repeats, I felt tired but I didn't have any pain.

I'm now thinking of going out and finding the thinnest running shoes on the market and using them for training. But first, I want to see what my legs feel like tomorrow.

To further solidify the books assertion they talk about the coach of the Stanford cross country team whom has had his runner, running bare foot a couple times a week and has almost eliminated injury's. This team is sponsored by Nike so the folks at Nike when down to visit the coach to find out why they weren't using their shoes. The coach showed the Nike rep's the data and they took it back to corporate did their own testing, comfirmed the findings and started a 2 year development project on a new line of shoes. I believe the shoes has been released but I'm not certain what they are called.

I don't think I'll be running a race bare foot anytime soon but you never know.