Fibark 5k 1st Place, 16:49

For the first time in a couple of years, I ran a race this weekend. Results here.

Salida’s biggest festival of the year is the Fibark festival, which happens every year at the peak of whitewater intensity in the summer. It’s mostly a kayak, rafting, paddle-boarding deal, but they throw in a few running races for good measure.

I didn’t have anything going on this weekend, and I felt like I was in decent shape, so I decided to give it a go. 

I ran 16:49 for 3 miles. It was labeled a 5k, but it was short. 

My main competition was two of the kids I coach on the track team, our likely 2nd and 3rd runners for the upcoming cross-country season. They were talking a lot of smack going into the race, but I was reasonably confident, given that they had just taken two weeks off at the end of the track season, and I was coming off some 60-65 mile weeks. 

The course goes up for 1.2 miles about 130 feet, and then rolls back down to where it starts for the remaining 1.8. 

We went out in 5:52, which was not easy for an uphill at 7250 ft. I told the kids I coach that when we turned back to town, I was going to make a move, because if it came down to a sprint, I didn’t want to be racing a 2:05 and a 2:07 800 runner in a dash to the finish. I ran a 5:30 and then slightly faster for the next mile and that was good enough to give me some space for the win. 

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I’ve decided that I need to get over my silly perfectionist tendencies when it comes to racing. I have it in my head that I can only race when conditions are perfect and I’ve had a perfect lead up, but I put a lot of time into running, and I might as well get out there and race on occasion. 

I was never that good to begin with, but I’m getting older but I’m not yet slowing down. I think being a coach has made me smarter about my own training, and that’s helped me fend off father time a little bit.

Still, that trend won’t continue forever. Might as well get out there and get after it while I still can. 

May Deets/An Actual Race?

264 miles this month with around 18,000 ft. of gain.

That’s my second biggest month in the last five years. I’ve run some strong workouts, but I’m doing mostly threshold sessions and easy days, with a tiny bit of speed, so it’s hard to read too much into what I’m doing right now. I can do 10 800s in 2:55 on 1-minute rest and I tend to touch at lactate threshold right at the end of that workout. Toss in a few 100s or 200s at the end, and that’s my go-to training right now. The other standard workout is 7 x 1 mile on 1’ rest at subtempo, so around 6:10 pace, if I’m on the track. Most of the time I do the latter workout off the track, so I do it be HR or just by feel. 

I’ve built up to 65 mpw, and assuming I have the time and don’t get hurt, I’m going to park it there other than race weeks.  

Speaking of which, I just signed up for the Vail Hill Climb. 7.7 miles, 2200 ft of vert. Seems like a low-pressure way to revisit the racing scene. Have really no idea what to expect in terms of time or competition. I mean, it should take an hour or so, so hopefully I won’t blow up like I did at Pikes a couple of years back. 

The track season ended well. Our top boy went 4:32 in the 1600 and 9:46 in the 3200 at state. He’s a sophomore, so he’ll have chances to improve on those times the next two years. Our top girl went 4:59 for 1600 and 11:08 for 3200, good enough for 3rd and 2nd, respectively, in our classification. She now owns the school records for both distances.

I’ve only been involved in high school track for the last four years, but the improvement in times and performances is stunning. I’m pretty sure only two girls broke 5 in the 1600 in the 90s in Colorado (Melody Fairchild and Rebekah McDowell), and those girls were all-time legends. This year alone I think 15 girls ran under 5. In 5A, the time that would place you dead last at state now would have been good enough to win state many years in the 90s and early 2000s. On the guys’ side, sub-4:20 used to be reserved for Adam Goucher and a handful of others when I was in high school. Rich Martinez held the 1600 record at 4:10.98 for 40 years. Now, two dozen boys run sub-4:20 every year at state. It’s just a different universe of competition.