I placed 45th overall (out of 120 finishers) with a time of 31:40. The course was muddy (7 races had gone before ours), and included some sharp U-turns and rolling hills. Certainly a competitive race, perhaps the most competitive I've ever encountered. There were 20 runners who ran 31:00 or faster, and 50 who ran under 32. On paper, more than half the field had distance PBs better than mine.
Despite the *apparently* low placing, I was pleased with the result given how rarely I dip under 32 minutes for 10k, even on flat roads. Guys running within 10 seconds of me have dipped below 14:30 for 5000m. Good company, if a little crowded!
Factoring in the tricky conditions, the afternoon start, my low 1:09 half PB in October, I really ought to run both a 30:xx 10k and sub-15 road 5k sometime very soon. Or am I getting too old? (I turn 34 in a few weeks). No, not yet given Colin Fewer beat me by 9 seconds and he's 5 years my senior. There is time to be had.
As for personal stuff, that's all to say.
Footnote:
I had an entire morning before the 2:30pm start to rest and wait. So I wrote a piece on gun violence in the USA based on fresh stats. Here is the most striking "discovery" I made for myself (I'm sure it's not an actual novel find):
You can view the rest of the article here on my rarely-used other blog. It obviously has nothing to do with running, but now that the off-season has begun it'd be silly to write about 2016 races or spend time on more open-diary stuff (my least-favourite type of running article). I also may have another brief Canadian Running article coming out for next month's issue based outlining the recent avalanche of Canadian records set in distance events.
Perhaps as an upcoming project I will include development on an Elo Ranking system for cross country running. It already has been shown to be effective in Basketball. Should I use a K-factor of 20, or something smaller?? Tune in sometime, eventually, to find out.
