Update 2: 18/69 in the 40-49 male category.  What’s up with nearly 25% of the race being in my division??  55/300 overall.

Update: Here is a photo taken of me by the race photographer:

I don’t have a lot of time to write a real race report, so let me just throw in the garmin data and what I sent to the google minimalist list for now…

And what I wrote to the email list:

Just a quick update that I ran the 10 miler and had NO achilles/soleus problems whatsoever. Well, for about two minutes around mile three I felt a little bit on the OTHER leg than the one that got so bad last Saturday and bothered me all week.

So what helped? I did a bunch of things so here goes:

1) Chiro on Monday (she did some ankle adjustments and deep tissue massage on knots and adhesions)
2) Deep tissue/structural integration massage on Wednesday
3) electro stim a couple of times (massage like setting)
4) lots of lower calf rolling with a foam roller like device
5) used topical ointments like mymed or biofreeze a couple of times a day
6) wore the go-lite sun dragon which is a 10-12mm heel lift shoe (this shoe has the added benefits of having cleat like lugs on the bottom, and it was snowy and icy. The inov8 195’s would have been a terrible choice. The 190’s would have been fine.)
7) 2xu calf compression socks… don’t know if these helped the AT but I really liked them. 🙂
8) 600mg ibuprofen two hours before the start

Another thought is that in a race situation, I really don’t have a lot of time to think about foot placement, so there is no real chance to force a particular foot strike. Thinking back to last week, besides the hard stair workout and hard pavement run, the long run on Saturday had a lot of flatter, gravel and old paved roads, and the inov8 195 does not perform well on that, in my opinion. So blame shoe choice a bit, though really it was a culmination of things that brought on the soreness.

Before I had the AT/soleus issue I had a stretch goal of 1:25:00, about 5 minutes faster than last year. I ended up with a 1:26:30, which I am extremely happy with considering how worried I was earlier in the week. For comparison, the course record was broken by 2+ minutes today, in 1:02:54.

I’ll add here that I went out fast — really fast.  My plan was about a 7:00 minute first mile to get some separation, and then back off.   I was in the low sixes at 1/2 mile and just under 7 at one, but then I didn’t back off soon enough..  Part of that is the adrenaline of the race, and part of it is that there is a lot of down the 1st couple miles…  You’ll see in the elevation chart a little climb, but not that much.  So miles 2.5 -5 or 6 were a bit of struggle to find the right zone.  My stretch goal of 1:25:00 would have been 8:30 pace, and I tried hard to hold that.  But I saw it steadily drop from 7:25, to 7:45, to 8:15, etc.  I knew the last half, and especially the last mile, were crazy tough to hold pace on because they are single track mtn bike trail with a lot of short ups and downs and tight turns.

Anyway, I’m quite happy with my time considering the AT/soleus issue earlier in the week.  Still 4 minutes better than last year!