2012 Medved Madness Race report

Two Sunday's ago was a race that I've always loved doing in the Rochester area.  It was the Medved Madness 15 mile trail race in Mendon Ponds Park.  They put it on as a relay and also a solo endeavor.  Me loving everything having to do with endurance, I chose the 15 miler in the solo division.  This race is another fantastic "bang for your buck deal" and the only reason that I didn't sign up earlier in the year was that I didn't know where Kim and I would be (OH vs. NY) at this point in the year, so when fellow running buddy Tim asked me on the Tuesday prior if I was racing, I immediately signed up.

You see, I already had a 14 miler on tap for Sunday anyway and as I said before this was a way to go out for a long run with some friends, get a great catered chicken BBQ afterwards, and a North Face tech tee to each registrant.  (with the NF shirt valued at $28, and the race entry fee being only $25, how can you pass that up?!?!)

Race morning was beautiful and good enough to wear arm warmers for the entire thing.  We all lined up and Dan "Magellan" Andrus threw us through the pond for the first loop as normal.  We got some misdirection in the opening few meters which allowed me to once again lead the entire field off course for about 200m and made the chase back up to the front runners a little hectic, but we made it back.

 So I've had a lot of things going on lately and I don't like to throw around excuses, but I don't know where my racing mojo went for this one.  Things kinda fell apart on loop 3 for me.  I ran thru the first two loops with the eventual winner and was feeling pretty good about life up until about mile #9.  He gapped me a tad while we went thru the timing mat for leg#2 to leg#3 and I knew he had far substantially better legs than I did that day.  I had been throwing little surges into him in the woods on the previous two legs and it felt like I was going to break him, but he got me by only a few yards after we went thru Hopkins Point and he was just gone.

I immediately lost all will to chase and mentally I was done.  I think I just wanted to get thru the last few miles and finish this race up.  I slowed WAY down and went from running 6:30's in the woods to running 8's or even 9's.  My HR never climbed above 132 for the final loop and subconsciously that is exactly the Ironman marathon pace that I've been running all my runs at lately.  So maybe my body just went back into "training mode"?  I don't know.  Either way a BUNCH of folks passed me and the same buddy that told me about the race, Tim, blew by sometime in that loop as well.  (He would eventually place 3rd overall)

I got passed by several folks and hit the line in somewhere around 1:51:xx and that was good for about 11th place (I don;t really know as the timing company screwed up big time and has me listed as 2nd overall in the results currently) Not a fun day racing wise, but still a good jaunt in the woods and I got my miles in.  The Chicken BBQ was fantastic and somehow I managed an Age Group Win as well, so was able to score a $15 gift cert to Medved.  Always nice swag.  Results are HERE, but they're still messed up.  Oh well.

Well a rest week was last week and I'm back at a bike focus (trying for 20+hours of SOLELY biking this week) and a run focus for the following week (trying for 45-50 miles that week - AKA wedding week) So there will likely be no blogging until we arrive back from Costa Rica.  Travel, train and be safe my friends.  Cheers!