Like most runners these holidays, I too chose to do a race so I got into the Turkey Trot elite race down in San Jose this year. I first would like to send a very big thank you to Angela and her wonderful family for allowing me to crash at their place for a night. Great food and great conversation, a very well rounded family! While at her house I was able to see the nice hills surrounding the Stanford/Palo Alto area and went for a run in my lucky place, "Stanford".
I call Stanford my lucky place because everytime I have run on that track I have done great things. From making my first national team to running personal bests 3 years consecutively! So I loved it and the run out there brung back all those warm memories. Only difference was this year my race was acutally a few miles away in the heart of San Jose. Also, I was kinda tired for this race being that I raced the sunday before in a cross country 10k course which left my back and calves a bit sore. After checking into the hotel I wandered down to the race start/finish area and realized the course was not set up and in fact most of the people working on the course had no clue what the elite course was like or where it went. So, I looked on a map and kinda ran a loop I thought would make sense. I ended up being right. The course was made up of four 1200 meter loops with a 200 meter to the finish.
Race day came and my roommate Robert Letting (a sub 28 10k, 13:30 5k guy) and I met up a few times warming up and both agreed that the course was a bit slick and the loop consisted of too many turns. After the women's race the announcer said that the course was a bit slow and that hopefully the men's race would produce better times. However, that didn't really happen either. With a field of low 13 mintue 5k runners the winner only ran 13:37. I ended up running well considering my lack of speed work at this phase in my season as well as running a long race only a few days earlier. I finished 19th overall unfortunately, but I did beat some very good guys and I ran close to my 5k best in 2008 with no speed work! I'm pretty confident at this point that I will be able to run a pretty good 5k come indoor season when I add in the speed sessions. Other than that, it was pretty good to see my friend Rose win her race and see all my old friends I raced throughout college. Club Nationals will be loaded with talent and a fleet of runners that I raced in college, so it will be sort of a "where are they now" race, which will reveal who stayed fit and who fell off. Now, I have a good speed workout tomorrow to see where my fitness really is and then I have another workout tuesday hopefully.
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