As per my fall racing schedule from last week, I raced the Hudepohl 14k this past weekend. It's a fun kickoff to America's largest Oktoberfest celebration.
The race starts at right outside of the Moerlein Lager House, between the Reds and Bengals' stadiums. Heading west at the start, the course basically makes on giant loop around downtown and Over-the-Rhine, passing many historic breweries and -- of course -- a couple killer hills.
Like the past couple years, the competition was a little sparse; however, Michael Eaton from Louisville showed up again. He won last year by about a minute, (and is a 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier) so I knew I'd have a tough race ahead of me.
I finished second to Eaton in 43:36 and couldn't be happier.
The race went out fairly conservative the first mile, and then I tried to get into a good groove and ratchet the pace down a little bit. From the start it was just the two of us, and it would remain that way for the duration of the race. I dictated the pace for the first half, and then Eaton took over for most of the second half.
Once he took over, I just tried to hang on for as long as possible. That lasted until the last mile and a half, when he gapped me going down Reading hill. I ended up finishing second by about 10 seconds, which is much better than the 60+ seconds from last year.
Here's why I'm really pumped about this race:
First of all, it's a 30-second PR on this course for me. Not counting last year (when we accidentally turned around early on Central Parkway and ran a short course), the fastest I'd run was about 44 minutes, and that was three years ago. To be back in that kind of shape -- better shape, even -- is awesome. And to top it off, I haven't really even started doing race-specific workouts. This is mostly just off of base training. Sure, I've had a few tempo-style workouts, but nothing outrageous. To be clicking off 5:00 pace off of base training is fantastic...I can't wait to see what I can do with some faster workouts under my belt.
In fact, this race makes for a great time trial. As I'm trying to eventually run sub-1:05 in the half marathon, I'll need to average 4:57 pace for the full 13.1 miles. Saturday, off of solely base training, I averaged 5:00 pace (on a hilly course) for close to 9 miles. All I have to do is extend that for four more miles. Give me a few more weeks (or months) of training, and it'll be exciting to see what I can do. And even better, I finished the race without feeling like I went to the well. Sure, I was tired, but since then I haven't felt exhausted or completely worn out. I have more important races later in the fall, so I'm not trying to burn myself up for this one early in the season. I feel like I managed my effort well enough to recover quickly and hop right back into the training schedule.
And then, of course, there was the beer. Because this is an Oktoberfest event, the top 3 men and women in both the 7k and 14k received a prize of beer. Not just any beer, but straight-from-the-warehouse cases of Hudepohl. Shout out to my fiance, who won the women's 7k...meaning that we both went home with a case of beer. Like this:
The race starts at right outside of the Moerlein Lager House, between the Reds and Bengals' stadiums. Heading west at the start, the course basically makes on giant loop around downtown and Over-the-Rhine, passing many historic breweries and -- of course -- a couple killer hills.
Like the past couple years, the competition was a little sparse; however, Michael Eaton from Louisville showed up again. He won last year by about a minute, (and is a 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier) so I knew I'd have a tough race ahead of me.
I finished second to Eaton in 43:36 and couldn't be happier.
The race went out fairly conservative the first mile, and then I tried to get into a good groove and ratchet the pace down a little bit. From the start it was just the two of us, and it would remain that way for the duration of the race. I dictated the pace for the first half, and then Eaton took over for most of the second half.
Once he took over, I just tried to hang on for as long as possible. That lasted until the last mile and a half, when he gapped me going down Reading hill. I ended up finishing second by about 10 seconds, which is much better than the 60+ seconds from last year.
Here's why I'm really pumped about this race:
First of all, it's a 30-second PR on this course for me. Not counting last year (when we accidentally turned around early on Central Parkway and ran a short course), the fastest I'd run was about 44 minutes, and that was three years ago. To be back in that kind of shape -- better shape, even -- is awesome. And to top it off, I haven't really even started doing race-specific workouts. This is mostly just off of base training. Sure, I've had a few tempo-style workouts, but nothing outrageous. To be clicking off 5:00 pace off of base training is fantastic...I can't wait to see what I can do with some faster workouts under my belt.
In fact, this race makes for a great time trial. As I'm trying to eventually run sub-1:05 in the half marathon, I'll need to average 4:57 pace for the full 13.1 miles. Saturday, off of solely base training, I averaged 5:00 pace (on a hilly course) for close to 9 miles. All I have to do is extend that for four more miles. Give me a few more weeks (or months) of training, and it'll be exciting to see what I can do. And even better, I finished the race without feeling like I went to the well. Sure, I was tired, but since then I haven't felt exhausted or completely worn out. I have more important races later in the fall, so I'm not trying to burn myself up for this one early in the season. I feel like I managed my effort well enough to recover quickly and hop right back into the training schedule.
And then, of course, there was the beer. Because this is an Oktoberfest event, the top 3 men and women in both the 7k and 14k received a prize of beer. Not just any beer, but straight-from-the-warehouse cases of Hudepohl. Shout out to my fiance, who won the women's 7k...meaning that we both went home with a case of beer. Like this:
When opened, it looks like this:
That's 48 beers, fresh from Hudepohl (which, it turns out, is the old Kaufman brewery...different spelling of the name, but I mean, it's basically my brewery). Any race where we could come home with beer is a successful one in my book.
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