Running with Eric

On Wednesday night I ran another Dirt Cheap race, this time at Lucien Morin Park. I finished the race in 41:56 which is a good deal quicker than last year, although a tad behind some past finishes.

The early part of the trail was severely flooded, which was a surprise as the weather has been fairly nice recently. Fortunately most of the trail was in pretty good shape. This course has a lot more steep climbs then most of the other dirt cheap races, and they wore me out a bit. After finishing Sehgahunda you would think I would be immune to a bit of climbing, but maybe the longer trail races are just getting me out of the habit of attacking any of the climbs.

My next race will be the SSGT Javier Ortiz Memorial 5k in Seneca Park.

On Wednesday night I ran a trail race at Lucien Morin Park. I finished in 45:45 which was a bit slower than I was in the past few years.

The race started in waves, and I was stuck in the awkward position of being one of the faster runners in the second wave. I spent at least the first half mile in second place and feeling the pressure to set a good pace. Halfway through the race I noticed that my car key was no longer in my pocket, which was a bit concerning. The second half of the race was tougher for me as I was physically drained from going out too fast, and mentally drained trying to figure out how I was going to get back home without my keys. I couldn’t even bring myself to give a full push for the final stretch as I already knew that my time wasn’t great, and I anticipated having to rewalk half the course looking for my key.

Fortunately someone had found my key, so there was no further drama, but it had given me a scare for half of the race. My next run likely won’t be until the 10k on the Fourth of July.

On Wednesday night I ran the shortest of the Dirt Cheap races at Lucien Morin Park. I finished the run in 38:46, which is half a minute quicker than my time from last year.

This was a PR for this course, and quick enough for me to be the 92nd finisher and in the top 26th percentile.

With my previous two races both taking over four hours to complete, I wasn’t quite ready for the shorter race. I crossed the finish line with a lot of energy, and regretting that I didn’t push ahead with a faster pace. Most of my races over the next two months will also take less than an hour, so I should really give my speed work a bit more practice.

On Wednesday I returned to trail running with the third Dirt Cheap race of the year at Lucien Morin Park. I finished the course in 39:03 which is three minutes quicker than last year, and five minutes quicker than I was in 2014. While I did feel good for the run, most of this improvement is probably actually due to the course being dry and not requiring me to fight the mud for miles.

My time placed me in 109th, which places me in the upper quartile of runners. My next race is a 5k this Friday.

My second trail race in five days was Wednesday at Lucien Morin Park. As part of the dirt cheap series, I have ran this course many times in the past, but this year’s time of 42:06 has been my fastest by far. With this time I dropped over two minutes from my previous best time on this course.

I finished 79th overall which places me in the top 23 percentile. Compared to the field this is significantly better than I did in the previous two dirt cheap races.