My training has been limited with the knees. MRI results a
few weeks ago showed a medial meniscus tear in my right knee. The left knee
which had the meniscus tear cleaned up in July has been grumpy. I have been running
three to four miles about four days per week for the past month. Pace is
between 9 and 10 minutes per mile. It is not pretty but it feels good to get
out.
Krissy signed us up for the Essex North Shore Homecoming 5K. Our former high school, North Shore Regional Vocational
Technical Institute merged with Essex Agricultural in 2014. Nice to see a
campus thriving with 1500 students and vibrant athletics. CMS teammate, Dan
Verrington is the cross country coach. He graduated from Essex in the early
1980’s. I was looking forward to getting on a start line and seeing how the
legs would feel. This was going to be a challenging course with the up and down
elevation every mile. My goal was to break 8 minute pace. I spoke with Dan to
find that the fastest mile of the 3 mile course was the last.
The race starts and finishes on the track which is at the
lowest elevation of the course. I had a dozen of runners ahead of me coming off
the start on the track. Big climb up the hill and around the athletic fields
and farm land. I had a little bit of a back and forth with a runner heading
through the first mile (7:32) which lead us into the 2nd mile up the
hills and across the high point at exactly mile 2. I caught three high school
kids along the way back to the finish but had to deal with a lap around the
track.
One of the kids I passed earlier came back with 100m to go.
I pushed side by side with him for as long as I could handle. I let off the
throttle at the end fearing that something would pop, break, or collapse. Our
chip times would be equal in the end (22:57.3). I placed 6th
overall, 1st age group. GPS got 3.01 miles. I felt pretty good about
the effort. So good to be back in a race. Legs held up OK but the left knee was
screaming after I got out of the car an hour later.
