The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

It's time for my first installment of The G.B.U.
The Good: On Sunday, before the superbowl, Dana and I ran our first group race as members of the Shoreline Sharks.  The name of the race: Run From The Pack 4 Miler.  The game: Runners go out at their goal pace (e.g. 12 min milers go first, then 10, then 9, etc) and the chase pack runs last at a 6 min mile and tries to pass each group.  If each group runs at their goal pace then it should all cumulate into a mad dash in the last 1/4 mile to beat the chase pack.
When Dana and I got there we were asked what our goal pace was.  We had been running at a 9 to 930 mile recently and so I proposed we could run a 9 min or 8:30 mile at best.  The race director told me they were only sending out groups at 1 min intervals and then told us we had no choice but to go out at an 8 min mile.

We watched a few groups go out until it was on our turn to run.  We had 4 people in our group and we all went out hard.  My GPS watch said we started at a 7:15 pace.  Our pace quickly slowed and by 1 mile we were hovering at a 7:50 pace.  One of the runners in our pack dropped back around this time and since he was running slower than an 8 min mile we left him behind.  Dana and I started chatting the other remaining pack runner, A nice guy about our age from Boston who turned out to be quite a decent runner.  The route was an out and back and at the 2 mile mark we stopped for a sip of water.  We were keeping our pace pretty steady and kept a sub 8 for the next 1.5 miles.  With a half mile to go Dana looked behind us to see one of the chase pack quickly approaching.  With the finish line in sight the chase pack caught up with us and we had to hand over $5.00, ( to benefit the running club).
Overall we had a good run, a fun time, and we are looking forward to the next Sharks event.

The Bad:  We only ran 4 miles on Sunday, when we had 8 on the schedule.  Its OK tho because this coming week we run 6 days in a row.

The Ugly: The Superbowl...... Need I say more?