Fall Creek Run-Around 20 Miler

My goal race for the first half of the year is the Boston Marathon. After last year's race, I had to go back. When I saw this 20 mile race on the calendar, I thought it might make a good long tempo run. The only questionable part about it was it was the week after the Hagg Lake 50K.

Initially, I was planning to wait until after Hagg Lake to see how I felt before signing up, but I got ahead of myself and signed up early...if I had waited, I probably would have skipped it. My right hamstring was bothering me enough after Hagg Lake that I took 3 days off from running and used a lot of RICE therapy. I ended up running 12 miles with the Pain Train on Thursday before the race and even a couple miles the day before at marathon tempo pace just to see how it might feel. It felt OK, so the race was on...I mean, tempo run.

The race didn't start until 10:00...that was nice...I left Corvallis around 8:00 and got there at about 9:20. My plan was to do a 3 mile warm-up, but I only had time for 2 miles. The area was pretty nice and the weather was perfect for a long road run...the reservoir kind of looked like Detriot...the water level was real low.

The race started off and I was in second behind John Leuthold, an RVR runner. I was pretty sure John had run the McKenzie River 50K last year, and I knew all those guys were in the 4:00:00-4:10:00 range...a little out of my range. We ran the first mile together...I found out he was training for the Way Too Cool 50K. We hit the first mile in a little over 6:00...not quite tempo pace...see you at the finish! As I slowed down, Jason Hawthorne caught me...he's a local guy, from Albany...I've seen him at a lot of races, but never really talked to him...we ended up running together until somewhere around mile 8 or 9.

For the first 6 miles or so, I felt pretty tight and was a little concerned that the race wasn't going to go too well...but a little after the 6 mile mark we turned a corner and started to run uphill and I started to feel better. Jason and I really pushed the uphill...and John seemed to be getting closer. I was surprised that we seemed to be catching up so quickly...at 10 miles I had left Jason and I was right behind John! He heard me, turned around with a shocked look on his face, and "put the hammer down". Now if I was racing, I might have tried to keep up, but as it was, I didn't even respond. He put almost 3 minutes on me in the second 10 miles of the race. I'll be interested to see how he does at Way Too Cool...turns out he did really well...finished 23rd in 4:12:18.

As far as the tempo run was concerned, the course wasn't real good for running a consistent pace...I ended up finishing in 2:10:51...a little slower than I hoped, but pretty good, I thought, with how I felt after Hagg Lake. Speaking of Hagg Lake, the course kind of reminded me of the ORRC Hagg Lake Road Run, only twice as long. All in all it was a really nice race...I finished in the top 3 so I got a free entry into the Oregon Marathon Relay in April...there's a 10K...it's the week before Boston...I might run it.