# blueollie

## Wildlife Prairie Park 4 mile (6.4 km) Race: 2012 edition and past events.

Fact: 37:07, 49 out of 128, barely held off Mike Rucker at the end. Perfect weather, good trail…too fast of a start for today:
8:33, 9:12, 9:26, 9:54.

I got nailed about a half dozen times in the final 2 miles; 2 young women got me in mile 3, and 2 young guys and one middle aged guy got me in the final mile. I barely held off Mike Rucker at the end.

Later: I lifted weights (full workout: highlights: 8 x 165, 4 x 175, 4 x 175 Bench, 8 x 135, 7 x 135 incline, military presses: 2 sets machine, 1 set dumbbells; 5 x 20 sit ups (high incline), 2 x 10 vertical leg lifts, rotator cuff, 4 x 10 pull ups, etc.) I was dying but hung on.

A couple of amusing things about the 4 mile race:

1. I was pinning my race number to my shirt just as a MILF walked by in her spandex. I almost stuck myself with the safety pins (by accident); I’ve got to pay attention to what I am doing!

2. I saw Peggy Shadid early and talked to her; I joked “will I have to beat you today” and she smiled and said “probably”; note that Peggy’s marathon PR is about 3:03 and that she has won the women’s division of the Steamboat 15K at least once; she knew that I was joking. Oh yeah, she won the women’s race in just under 31 minutes (not bad for this course). Note: she packed two “left feet” of her racing flats and decided to run that way. Imagine how fast she would have gone had she worn both a left and right shoe!

Here she is with her son.

I got a hug from her and from one of my yoga teachers (Ms. Nancy) who was out working the course.

My race: I got to anal about trying to get position during the narrow single track portion. No one that I passed got me back, but I expended too much energy here; I did ok on the road part and mile 1 came right after a steep uphill. 8:33 was too fast and I was right behind Mike Rucker.

The second and third miles were mostly on the floodplain trail; this was 3-4 people wide so passing was easy..then again it was I who was getting passed. The surface just sapped the strength right out of me and my legs turned to stumps. I strained to stay ahead of two young women and they got me. We had a couple of decent size hills here.

Then, just after mile 3 (which took forever to get to), the huge hill came. I walked it (deliberately) but not quickly enough. I got back to running but didn’t have much left for the upcoming road section. I got passed about 4 times here (all guys, 3 young, 1 middle age) and didn’t get them back. I could see a gang about 200 meters ahead of me but didn’t have the sprint to get them.

I was so eager to see the finish; then I could hear someone sprinting after me so I mustered what I could and barely held him off…it was Mike Rucker again!

Note: Mike is much older than I am; when he was my age he would have run this course in about 28 minutes or faster.

Every year I vow to do better and every year, I struggle on this course. It is good conditioning though; it features about .75 miles of park road, perhaps .5 miles of single track trail, some wood chip trail, but mostly grassy trail with some hills thrown in here and there.

The course (some of it)

Previous races

Regression: $y = 28.24 + .73x$ where $x$ is the “year” variable coded so that $x = 1$ in 1999 and $x = 13$ in 2012. Note that $R = .916$ and $R^2 = .839$ which is about as good of a linear fit as one can get without cheating.
Outliers: $x = 1$ coming off of an injury. $x = 3, x = 11$: 2001, 2009: good years. $x = 12$: 2011: very muddy.
Note: I converted the 5K times to 4 mile times for the purposes of this regression; I also did not count the “powerwalk” year.

2011: 39:07 4 mile run (muddy)
2010: injured
2009: 26:30 5K run
2008: 29:20 5K powerwalk.
2007: 26:27 5K run.
2006: worked the race
2005: 33:25 4 mile run
2004: skipped
2003: 33:18 4 mile run (70/170)
2002: 30:22 4 mile run (39/166)
2001: 28:18 4 mile run (32/210)
2000: 29:26 4 mile run
1999: 30:42 4 mile run

April 21, 2012 -