Saturday morning the Greater Texas Track Club Elite, plus myself (stepping in) had the opportunity to bust some rust and get our fall season kicked off at the 2018 DRC XC Relay! The annual relay is a 3 x 2 mile event at the famous Norbuck Park Cross Country course; this hilly course is tough, but offers a great opportunity to have some fun and to get in some good work!
Ryan and Jake had committed to doing this relay early in the summer and so when our third leg was not able to race on Saturday I was called in to field the team…unfortunately, that was our downfall!!!
Jake led us off in the relay coming through with our team’s fastest leg of the day in 10:24 and handing off to Ryan in 3rd place just a handful of seconds back from the lead. Ryan ran a tremendous leg tactically in 10:27 to take the lead and hand off to me in first place. Now, the pressure was ON…I had a 6-second gap on second place and I am OLD, OUT OF SHAPE, and the farthest thing from FAST as you can be at this moment.
To say that I was running scared is an understatement…I was terrified. This young kid was chasing ME down and doing it FAST. I came through the mile in ~5:10 (my GPS had 5:02) and HE WAS ON ME. But the second mile starts off uphill and I thought, if I was going to have a chance, I would need to break him UPHILL. So, that’s what I did…or at least what I thought I did.
Unfortunately, for me, the last 400 meters was downhill, but on some pretty technical terrain…and I was way too timid and allowed the second place runner to overtake me and finish me off with a final kick. My time was 10:50…which was under my goal of breaking 11 minutes…but didn’t get the job done.
It was fun to race and be with the guys, but I was hoping to help bring home the WIN for those guys.
All in all, it was a successful day and a great start to the season. The guys are in great shape…in 2014 I ran 10:33 for this course and ended up running 51:34 over 10 miles a few months later.
Now, it’s time to get back to work!!!
Phillips Running 