On Sunday May 1st I ran the USATFNE 10k Championships at the James Joyce Ramble in Dedham Mass. I came into this race having upped my mileage over the last few weeks and still dealing with some plantar issues in my left foot. So I wanted to be smart with my racing, but still run a good hard race. I figured if I ran a good race I could run around 32:50 (5:17 pace), so that was the goal! This was also a race my team, The Central Mass Striders (CMS), really felt like we had a chance to win if we put in a strong race. So the pressure was on! After a good warm up with my CMS teammates it was go time!
As the race went off I tried to stay relaxed and make sure I did not get in over my head early in the race. The first mile is fast as it has some downhill. So I wasn't surprised when we went through the first mile in 4:59. Although I still think I was about 5-6 seconds faster than I should have been. At this point I was near CMS teammate Greg Hammett. He is a very strong runner and I knew he would run a solid pace, so I tucked in behind Greg and went for the ride. We hit the 2nd mile in 10:11 (5:12 mile). We were in really good position, with three other CMS guys in front of us, Greg and I were 4th and 5th on the team. At this point no other team had more than 2 or 3 guys in front of us. As we got close to three miles a couple guys went past us and we hit the third mile in 15:33 (5:22). Around this point I went past Greg and I expected him to tuck in behind me. Little did I know that Greg was hurting a bit and actually falling off the pace. I didn't even realize this till after the race. At this point I ended up tucking in behind Michael Bunker of the Dirigo team and followed him for the next three miles. We hit 4 miles in 20:55 (5:22)and 5 miles in 26:18 (5:23). During this stretch nobody went past us, I think we may have past a couple guys, but I was just concentrating on hanging on and keeping the pace strong. Not long after the 5 mile mark I could hear some guys coming up from behind us. To my horror it was a pack of Whirlaway guys! I managed to hold them off through the 6th mile mark in 32:45 (5:24). With 0.2 miles to go I knew it was going to be a dog fight and my legs were already feeling like telephone poles! Michael Bunker pulled away from me and soon I was in a battle with Whirlaway's Keven O'Neil, Pat Ard, and Joe Navas. I ran as fast as my legs would let me go, but it was not to be. We all finished with in 3 seconds of each other, but I was the last one across the line.
At this point I was thinking that there was a good chance that we were going to lose the team race to Whirlaway. Those guys ran a great race and had five guys scored before we had our 4th (me) and 5th (Greg Ward) guys in. I left the race thinking we had lost, only to get a call later telling me we had actually won by 4 seconds! I was pretty excited that CMS was the 10k Mens Open Team Champion! What a tight race! Special thanks to Kevin Gorman who was out there on the course cheering us on. It was a great help to have all that support out there on the course. I am looking foward to doing it aover again this weekend at the USATFNE 6k Championships!
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