2015 Mews 8k

First off, I need to plug another blog post I did for the Canadian Running Series as one of their digital champions.
Running and Family: A Balancing Act
It went live Thursday, and I haven't had much of a chance to jump into people's thoughts on it, as my family and I went to our families cabin for the weekend, and there's no internet service. I know, no internet, but it's by choice. After a relaxing four days, I finally sat down to write about my latest race, the Mews 8k.

This race is a staple on the St. John's running scene, and has been around for a long time. Many people use this race as a primer for the race of the year around here; the Tely 10. With the Tely being 16km/10miles, this fast 8k race is a great predictor for how people will do in two weeks.

I went into this race looking to break 27 minutes, and hopefully get around the 26:30-40 mark, as I felt that my fitness was pointing towards those times. The morning of the race, the weather was on my side, about 8 degrees and overcast. I made my way over to the start area and did my warm up with my hoodie on to try and warm up my upper body. With a few minutes till the start, I ditched the hoodie, did a couple of strides and made my way to the line. The weather gods were on our side this day, as the clouds slowly started to part, and the sun made its appearance, which put everyone in a great mood to start the race.

Once the gun went, I jumped to the front of the chase pack (the two guys every thought would take the race did at the start, and really it was a race for third, or so we thought). Coming into the first km marker, Peter Power, one of the veterans of the local racing scene made a move and darted to second place, which surprised a number of people. Myself, and three others stayed together, and attempted to reel in third place. At the 2.5km mark, there's a right hand turn onto a long straight stretch, and another runner and myself used this to our advantage and split around the other runner, and put distance between him and us, and narrowed to gap to third. Just before the 4km mark, the route makes another right hand turn onto Empire Avenue, which is a steady downhill for the next 3km. At this point the runner I was with made another move to jumped into third and hammered it for the next km to put some distance between us. I locked in between the runner who was now in fourth and slowly reeled him to within maybe 10 feet during this downhill section.
With 1km to go I was feeling great and confident in my race, but noticed that fourth was speeding up, and I was late to match. By the time we were on the last 500m to the finish he was a good 40 feet away, and I started to get disappointed, but I remembered what I told a friend of mine a few days earlier. I can outkick anyone, if we're in a group, or its a sprint to the finish, I'm coming out on top. So, I started to kick, and noticed I was pulling him in, but not fast enough, so I kicked again, and barrelled down on him like a freight train. I played a lot of ultimate, soccer, basketball, baseball, and pretty much everything with short bursts of speed, so this wasn't surprising that I was catching him, the only problem was my timing sucked. I kicked too late and finished right on his heels.
Kicked too late
Lesson learned.

I crossed the line in 26:50, and I'm really happy with my effort and result, as it was a 47 second PB at that distance, and I'm feeling strong and ready for a great result at the Tely this year. Hopefully I'll get that recap up quicker. My training so far has been going great, and I'm excited to see what I can do this year at the Tely, and this fall when I run the #STWM in Toronto.