Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Mike Felix- American Fork Steel Days and Deseret News 10K

Hello everybody, this is my first blog entry since the Utah Valley Marathon in mid-June, and this past couple of weeks have been very good for racing.  Ever since my marathon in June, I have wondered how much rest is enough after the marathon.  I decided to take two weeks off, and start my training for the Top of Utah Marathon in September.  It wasn't a lot of time, and for those first couple of weeks, my body felt a little sluggish, but one of the ways I've seen works best to get your body in shape is to race yourself into shape.  I decided to race two races within 5 days.

The first one was American Fork's little Steel Day's 5k race on Saturday, July 19th.  While this race only had about 150 competitors, it is always ran by American Fork High School's Cross Country team.  If any of you know about this team, you will know that they have been ranked #1 nationally at least once throughout the season four of the past five seasons, and have one state every year for the past five years.  They are just one example of the amazing running competition in the state of Utah.  So as I started the Steel Days race, going out at a 5:20 pace with a pack of about 5 runners, some of AF's top guys and a couple of recently returned missionaries who are trying to train to get back in shape for collegiate running.  At about mile 2 though, the pack was three, Connor McMillan, AF's a best runner from a year ago and future BYU runner, Zach Jaclin, AF's top runner, and myself.  Throughout the last mile, they both start to pull away and I was just trying to hold on for a respectable 3rd place finish, or somehow pass Jaclin for second.  However, unfortunately for me, AF's next best runners were coming up on me hard, and within the last tenth of a mile, they both passed me, leaving me in a disappointing 5th place.  My time was actually the best time I had had on that particular course with a 15:58, and I was alright with the race with it only being my third week of training, I was just hoping for a little better.

That brings me to my second race in the week, the Deseret News 10K.  Going into the 10K, I had a little more confidence partially because I think the 10K is a race that I am more suited for, as it is a little longer race that competitors can't just rely on pure speed to win.  However, the race that morning had an early start at 6:00AM, and the previous night, some friends and I had a pre-race meal of pizza a little later than I should've eaten, because when I woke up and did my pre-race warm up, I felt that pizza as if I had just eaten it an hour before.  Needless to say, I was not feeling good, and not expecting to run well.  However, and maybe its because my expectations were not high, I started out and felt surprisingly good.  My style of running a 10K is to go out a little slower than my competitors, and pick up the speed throughout the race.  This strategy worked extremely well in this race, as a ran a decent but conservative 5:00 minute first mile (putting me in about 30th place), and slowly pick runners off every consecutive mile afterwards.  By the time I reached the 5K, I noticed my time was fast 15:55, three seconds faster than my 5K five days earlier, the only difference is I felt a lot better in the 10K and the second 5K was a negative split of 15:54!  I was so happy, I had negative split the race, and both by 5Ks were faster than my race the weekend before.  Overall, my place was 8th, and my time was 31:49.  I also won the 25-29 age group.  I was extremely pleased with this result, and I would definitely recommend this race to others as it is good downhill course that will really improve your confidence.



 

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