Mayor's Cup 8K cross country race

Photo by Joe O'Leary

Todd and I got to Franklin Park finding parking what seemed like a mile away. It was certainly a packed house. I headed out for a warm up with Ryan Collins and found Todd to cover 2 plus miles to check on the course which was dry if not for a few stretches of mud. Overall, the course was in great shape. The race went out fast as usual. I hooked up with Todd after 200 meters. The course mile came around in 5:20 (GPS showed 5:14). I lost some space as Todd pulled away up Bear Cage Hill. The quick pace caught up with me after two miles. Bernat Olle passed by and my legs were just flat. I looked ahead in the wilderness loop and saw Todd gaining on Ryan. I came around for the 5K around 17:30 and into the wilderness loop again trying to keep it together. Runners around me were suffering but occasionally I would latch onto someone for a bit. I came around to mile 4 around 22:40 (5:40 pace) and had a WMDP guy to work with for the last mile. We went back and forth into Bear Cage and I encouraged him to give it a go talking him through the top telling him to open it up. He was hurting so I proceeded with my own advice knowing that I had to hustle to break 28 minutes which was my goal. I counted that finish line clock all the way down the home stretch from 27:30. Official results had me at 27:58 so that made for a happy guy and a clear head for the ride home. I was the 4th CMS runner behind Greg Putnam, Todd Callaghan, and Ryan Collins. Dave Dunham capped off the scoring for us as the all critical 5th man. I headed out for a cool down with the team, Bernat, Jon Longo (training for the Philadelphia Marathon), and Kieran Condon (training for the New York City Marathon).

Mayor's Cup Cross Country Race Results