The Pacific Association Cross Country Championships is a highly competitive race that caps off our local XC season in late November. The race typically draws a handful of elite runners, and a large number of sub-elites who train in northern California. I first ran the race (poorly) way back in my freshman year of college, and have run the past three years.
My cross country training got off to a slow part thanks to a minor injury at the end of the summer. I spent most the fall just trying to gradually build my mileage back into 50 mpw range, rather than hammering some interval workouts. I jumped into three XC races in October and November to race my way into shape. The results weren't spectacular, but respectable for my fitness level.
The one race where I really wanted to run well and help out my West Valley TC team, was the PA Championships. In the couple weeks leading up to the race, I finally got a couple workouts in where I felt fast again, and I was feeling snappy on my runs.
The morning of the race, I felt nervous for the first time in a while. I was confident, but felt good to be jumping into a race where I thought I'd be ready to run. The weather was cloudy & cool, but steady rains the prior week left the course extremely muddy. Warming up, I realized that the thing I love about the Golden Gate Park course is that everyone else hates it. If you jogged the course you might not realize how challenging it is considering there's no major hills. It's just the type of course that's constantly changing - hard dirt, soft dirt, uneven grass, long gradual hills, short steep hills - so it's really tough to get in a rhythm over the 6 mile race.
When the gun went off, I tried to settle into a good but comfortable pace on the first of 3 loops. The field seemed larger than the last couple years, but I was feeling alright, and saw four of my teammates 5-10 seconds ahead who I know would be good people to key off of. About a mile into the race, I was feeling pretty good, but knew it was too early to charge forward and catch them. At the end of the first loop, I had caught two of my four teammates, and would work with them for the rest of the race. The mud was proving to be a big factor, and I was really glad I wore spikes. You could tell the guys who were wearing flats, because it seemed like they just stopped moving in certain spots.
As the race went on, I did a good job of avoiding mid-race analysis. I just tried to stay with my teammates, and keep rolling whenever I felt the pain creeping in. By the last lap, I was right behind veteran Todd Rose, and quickly improving newcomer Matt Kane. There were three other runners (who I didn't know) from other teams that were battling right with us. With just over a mile to go, Matt threw a surge to move ahead of us, and Todd was just behind them. As they started to pull away from the other three competitors, I knew I was in the number 5 spot for West Valley, so I needed to take every spot I could. At one point with about a mile to go, the pain really hit, but I told myself to just keep pushing and don't think too far ahead. As we charged up the last hill, there was only one runner left between Todd and me, but he was 15 yards ahead.
One advantage of running on this course so much - both in workouts and as part of normal runs, is knowing where you can attack, and particularly how long you can hold that final kick. Cresting the last hill, I kept my eyes on this guy's back & kept saying to myself I'm gonna get him, I'm gonna get him. As I headed down, and made a sharp left turn, I kept winding my kick up and moving faster, slowly cutting into the lead. With about 100 meters to go, we dropped into the meadow which was very muddy. At this point I'm digging for that last gear & closing the last bit of the gap. Just when I think I had him, he speeds up. For a split second I thought I'd run out of time, but then I found that last gear and passed him a couple strides before the line.
My final time was 33:30 (for ~ 6.1 miles) and 51st place. Most people ran around a minute slower than last year due to the conditions, so after only losing 45 seconds over last year was very encouraging. I also finished right with guys who had beaten me by huge margins only a couple weeks ago. It felt great to end a short training season with a satisfying performance.
