Saturday morning I found myself in an interesting position - the starting line of a cross country race - an actual cross country race. The race was up in St. John's at Pier Park (http://www.portlandonline.com/parks/finder/index.cfm?PropertyID=513&action=ViewPark), which is an amazing park to run. They also feature a disc golf course, so I was reminded of Highland Road Park in Baton Rouge. The race was a pure cross country race as it featured exactly zero mile markers. Just line up, fire a gun, and run hard to beat the guy next to you.
Because my training hasn't necessarily been geared toward running great cross country performances, I didn't have extraordinarily high expectations coming into the race. I figured 27:30 under good conditions on a fair course would be pretty solid and was willing to live with anything under 28:00. Well, the conditions were decent - drizzly and in the low 50s, but as it had been raining for a few days the course was pretty soggy. During my warm up I devised a strategy to surge where the footing was solid and bide my time where I sank. I got out well and enjoyed myself on the back hills where the footing was the best, before looping around the soccer and baseball fields where I practically sank into the mud. The course featured a shorter loop at the start (around the back hills), then two longer loops (around the perimeter of the park), so we hit the hills 3 times during the race. Fortunately we had good footing for the last mile or so (at least it felt like a mile-ish) of the race, so I was able to finish strong and even caught a couple people in the last quarter mile or so. I ended up running 27:43 and placing 11th overall (results: http://teamredlizard.com/xc/2010%20XC%20Race%204%20Results.htm).
Warming up and cooling down added about 5 miles total.
Day/Week: 10/42
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