Tuesday, March 18, 2008

There's a new force in town!

MDRA is back baby! We may not be in the glory days of Gene and Marty, and we may be nowhere able to compete with Run N Fun and the sub-5:00 milers, but we're here, and I'm impressed with our team!

At the kick-off for the USATF Road Race Circuit (Human Race 8K on Summit Ave in St. Paul), MDRA took 6th place (out of 10)! I'm really happy with how our team did.

We've run an MDRA team for the last two fall cross country circuits, but this is our first road circuit in years. We welcomed a new teammate, Joseph, who quickly soared to near the top and brought our average way up! It's great to have you aboard Joseph! Mike, Kirk, Mix-master, Professor, Taylor, Nick and the rest of the team had great runs, with lots of PR's and post-collegiate PR's being set.

Personally, it was a great race. I was guaranteed to PR since I've never run an 8K race before. But I had no idea I'd be in such shape to run as fast as I did, racing as fast a pace for an 8K that I do for 5Ks. My final time was 28:54 or a 5:49/mile pace. After my poor outing at the Winter Half, I was really nervous about Boston (which is less than 5 weeks away!!) But now my confidence has returned and I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can do at the marathon distance.

And lastly, with this being my first Human Race, I can't say enough about how much fun it is to run a race where so many great athletes are racing. My overall place wasn't good, but that's because pretty much every top runner in the state is toeing the line at this one. It makes for great competition. Thanks have to go to the nameless individuals who pushed me the last mile as I struggled to stay ahead of them. While I did succeed at that, it came at the price of losing my breakfast at the finish line, so I never got a chance to see who was behind me providing that extra motivation. But I am grateful for it because I can honestly say I've never pushed myself so hard at the end of a race before. I learned a lot about racing on Sunday!

Our women's team placed 5th out of 7, and they are right on the heals of 4th place! Great job ladies! I'll let your blog speak for itself.

Looking forward to next year's Human Race already!

2 comments:

crossn81 said...

Nice recap! I hadn't seen that we placed 6th, not too shabby!

Rocco said...

Puking at the end of the race? Now I know why call you Nasty Nate!

I know the Pr was guaranteed, but I have a feeling if you had the Human Race the last three years, Sunday still would have been a PR. Look at how much speed you picked up from the Frozen Half to the Human Race. You gots to feel good.