Saturday, April 9, 2010 (1500m race 4:16)

69 - 69 - 67 - 51 ish

I am getting to be very predictable when I run.

Just as with every track race I run, I went out in the very back. I was in the slow heat of the 1500, and there were 30 people in the race. This means I had to work my way up past a lot of runners.

On the first lap, I was pretty doubtful that I was going to be up near the front by the end of the race, as I had expected to be based on seeds (I seeded myself at 4:20, and this was tied for the top seed in the heat). There was a big clump of people in front of me going too fast for me to catch up.

I continued passing people the whole time, running pretty much steady. I would sit on someone only for a short while before moving up. I had the strange feeling that I wasn't doing very well and wasn't going very fast, but I was moving up towards the front of the race nonetheless.

Around 900 in I could finally see where the front of the race was. Everyone must had simply slowed down considerably. There was a guy in orange with a good jump on everyone and a pack of five or six chasing him. I caught the pack on the homestretch going into the bell lap, but one runner had broken away from the pack and caught the orange guy.

I passed the orange guy on the curve to move into second place, and began thinking about how hard to move to catch the last guy in front. It turned out to be a moot point. He had a lot left and I didn't gain a step on him, but I did hold off everyone behind me to finish second in the heat. My arms were heavy and I felt like I couldn't kick at the end, but considering my recent training I'm very pleased with this race.

The other Caltech runners had up-and-down performances. Stephanie and Sylvia both ran well in the final heat of girls. Will Livingston also had a nice race behind me in the same heat (well, the first 200m were in front of me). He held off Nolan Shaheed by one second, running a PR 4:31. Shaheed set a new master's record running about 4:32. That's pretty awesome for a guy who's 61 years old!

I went back in the mid-day shuttle that was picking up long distance runners, so I didn't watch the 5000, but it was fun to spend a day at a good, mid-size track meet. There's an incredibly high proportion of hot people at these things.