For Whom the Dogs Bark

72F, 90% humidity, calm and partly cloudy.  A little warm, but generally good running weather.  Today's race is named after a lawyer who, to put it bluntly, has been dead for 15 years.  I imagine he is still in protracted negotiations at the pearly gates.  My interest in this race was that the entry fee was covered, end of discussion.  Supposedly our firm had a team put together, a meeting place and everything.  I got there early and ran 3 warmup miles, checking out the course.  It is the same downtown course that ends on a long uphill pull, which is actually possible in Houston, though it isn't all that steep once you climb out of the final underpass.  Except this course, being 5 miles instead of 3, loops back into downtown for an even longer uphill, then turns around for a slight drop into the finish chute.  Also included are two underpasses going out, and the same two coming back.  Underpasses aren't fun. 

Made my third POP stop, made it to the meeting place at the appointed time and met a colleague named Harve, and nobody else, I suppose sleeping was the better option.  I don't know Harve, but turns out he is a moderately serious marathoner who has now also bought a bike.  I got to talk to him quite a bit on the way to the start.  He said he was going to do low 8s so I assumed we wouldn't be running together unless he was lying.  He wasn't.

My goal was to do the first 3 miles at 7:00 then try to lay down the hammer on the uphill coming back.  That is pretty much what happened, although not quite the way I expected.  Harve and I were talking when all of a sudden the gun went off unannounced, like a Laurel and Hardy western.  Everyone was startled and took off.  I started a little bit too far back and had to bob and weave a little, but still got a good first mile.  My splits were 6:50, 7:15, 6:55, 6:56, 6:32 and 5:42 pace for the stub split to the finish, average pace 6:51, the best I have done at this distance.  My heart rate monitor is completely kaput, so I don't know how hard I was working.  I was on the fringes of the puke zone in the last mile, but not that deep into it, would have been interesting to see what my heart rate was.  If it had been 185 or lower I would have pushed harder, but I felt like I put in a good effort.  I was especially surprised to see the 6:32 for mile 5 because it felt like I was slowing down with the lactate buildup in my legs.  As a comparison, last fall I ran a 10K at 7:11 per mile (35F) and a 5-mile run at 7:14 per mile (77F, 5 degrees warmer than today).  Any way you slice it, today was an improvement, but 6:51 per mile at this distance translates into 7:37 per mile for the marathon distance.  Add in the fact that my marathon paces don't translate well and my true marathon pace right now is probably in the 7:45 to 7:50 range, so that is the work I have cut out for me in the next two months to get down to 7:30 at altitude.

I got 8th in the 55-59 age division but forgot to check my overall standings.  First place old guy ran 6:12 per mile, overall winner somewhere in the 5s.

PM:  Went out again before dinner for some LHR work, ran 6.09 in 1:03:39, average pace 10:27 per mile.