Pacing gig

In Thursday’s post I mentioned that I was looking forward to a day of spectating on Saturday at the Marathon and then the XC races. Well I can confirm now that I will have a bit of a closer look at the action at Thunder Road than originally anticipated. I am going to try and help last year’s winner and 2010 Grand Prix Series Champion Jordan Kinley over the first few miles of the race. Jordan is back to defend his crown and is looking to lay down a time in the mid 2:20s. That is 5:30 pace!! My goal is to take the race out at that pace and see how far I can keep going! I ran my last 15k race at a pace slightly faster than that so on a ‘normal’ day I would expect to be able to maintain 5:30s for 9 or 10 miles quite ‘comfortably’ but with Richmond still in the legs I honestly don’t know how it’s going to turn out tomorrow. Certainly my Tuesday track workout was an indicator that I have a long way to go before getting back to the fitness levels I had pre Richmond but we’ll see. It will actually be in my best interests to run as far as I can so that I don’t get stranded miles out of the city with a long run back into town!

Originally I had hoped to help out my buddy Billy Shue in his quest to go sub 2:40 and was going to jump in the race at about half way and help pace him but we caught word that the race organizers were specifically on the lookout for this after complaints last year and would be disqualifying any competitors who took advantage of ‘outside help’. So I’m actually getting a race number tomorrow so that I’m an official entrant in the race. Maybe if 5:30s prove to hot to handle I can still help out Billy and throw in some 6 minute miles instead! Should be fun!