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Music City Distance Carnival Recap

About 10 days ago I drove down to Nashville for the Music City Distance Carnival, which is a very unique event of mid- and long-distance track races. It's a really cool atmosphere that brings together youth, post-collegiate, masters, and professional runners contesting distances of 800 to 5000 meters. In an endless slog of road races, it's fun to change things up and experience the speed of the track, which I have definitely missed since college.

It turns out the 'speed of the track' wasn't all that speedy for me. I ran 14:47 (I was hoping for about 30 seconds faster) and placed 12th. The good news, though, is that I didn't get lapped.

I came into the race really confident after a 14:33 road 5k PR two weeks earlier, so I felt I was really primed to run 14:20. I could be happy with 14:20...it's right near my college PR, and to get back there after focusing on longer distances would be a good sign.

However, it just wasn't meant to be this weekend. It started Saturday evening, when the meet was postponed at the very time I arrived at the track. Turns out there were pretty sever storms looming and the city was under a tornado watch. So yeah, no running in those conditions.

Post-storm twilight.
So we hung around in limbo for three hours, waiting to hear whether we'd still run that evening or the next morning. By 9 pm, it was decided: screw it, we're running in the morning. Such is the life of a runner: a lot of sitting around and rolling with the delays.

The morning of the race played out much like when I was in Pittsburgh: I felt great warming up, I had a lot of pop in my legs, and I felt smooth for the first mile. After that, though, I knew it was going to be a struggle. I went through the mile in 4:36 (exactly where I wanted to be), while the pacers went through in 4:19...so the race was pretty strung out.

After the mile I found myself falling off pace yet moving up in the pack. I was slowing; everyone else was just slowing more. Despite the disappointing time, I finished right with an old college rival (well, not much of a rival...he usually kicked my ass), which was mildly encouraging.

So I ran on the slow end of where my fitness is at this point. A part of me wants to get back on the track and go rip another 5000 - even if I'm just running a time trial by myself - because I know I have faster times in my legs. Who knows, maybe I'll do it one morning...I've got two more 5ks on June 28 and July 4th before returning to some base training. Maybe that would be the perfect time to go for it.

After the race, I stuck around the meet with my friends and watched the other Invitational races. They were awesome. I missed a masters 3000 steeple world record while I was cooling down, but I caught a women's #2-ranked steeple time and a fantastic 3:55 mile. All in all, it was fun to be a track nerd again. Rumor has it that we'll be doing something similar in Cincinnati next summer, which would be incredible.

This is what a 3:55 mile looks like.

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