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Thanksgiving Day Race Recap

Sorry for the delay in getting this post out, I don't really have any good excuse. Holidays and such, I guess.

Anyway, for the third time in the last four years, I finished second. (The one time I wasn't second, I was fourth.) So that's disappointing in a Phil Mickelson-esque way.

My time this year was 30:48, which was a solid 30 seconds better than last year, but about 30 seconds slower than I ran earlier this fall at Minster (which, admittedly, is a much faster course with much more competition).

Coming down the home stretch.

The race this year was over by the first mile. By that point, Team USA Minnesota member and eventual winner Eric Finan had started to gap the rest of the lead pack. Going up Liberty hill around the mile and a half mark, that gap became a gulf, and all that was left was a race for second.

By the time I was struggling up Liberty, I realized today just wasn't my day. So what can you do? Pack it in, gut it out, and don't let anyone else pass. If you can't close the gap, at least don't let it get bigger.

In the end, the result isn't too disappointing. I've been struggling to recover coming off of Indy Monumental, and so my legs hadn't quite come around yet. Add that to the fact that, in the week leading up to the race, I was trying to shake a lingering cold, and I just wasn't 100% ready to go. Not that I would've won had I been 100% (I still would not have won), but at the very least I could've made it a more competitive race. That's the part I was most frustrated about.

But anyway, I'm not too down about it. That was the first sub-par race I've had this fall, while everything else has exceeded expectations. That's how this sport goes...it's not always going to be your day, which is why we run multiple races in a season and not just one.

And so, training continues! I'm still targeting the USA Half Marathon Championships hosted by Houston this year, and I've got six more weeks to peak for it. After getting in a bit more of the recovery stuff post-Thanksgiving, I'm starting to ramp the mileage and intensity back up. My goal is to make the next month the best training period of the fall, taper well, go for the sub-1:05 in Houston and see what happens.
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