Sun 9/8 - PM 60 minutes incl. 5k xc race

Scratching a stupid itch, nearly got my ass handed to me as a result. Toying with the idea of doing this low-key race and following it up with a 20-30 minute tempo run on nearby roads. With the alternative being laps around the Longfellow Loop, the race option became more attractive as the weekend wore on. This despite the fact that I slept too little both of the last two nights and had a longish drive just to get to the start line from where I spent last night. On top of that arrived about half an hour before the gun went off with the lunch I ate far too close to race time still digesting in my stomach. Burping both before and after the race which is never a good feeling. Warmup was cursory at best, maybe 10 minutes combined of jogging and drills. I was figuring that I might be able to vulture a win running around 18 minutes. While this ended up being the case it certainly wasn't the relaxed controlled effort I would expect for that execrable a time. In fact it was clearly a race as I was being chased/ doing the chasing right until the final 200m on the track. In fact he put in a move with 600m to go that I thought would do me in, although I was able to rally it required digging a lot deeper than I would have expected. While part of the slow-ass time can be ascribed to the ridiculous course that included literally dozens of turns (which I should have recognized going in) and the fact that almost all of the trail in the woods was rocky and particularly rutted and strewn with tree roots. By the end it was a stumble-fest and very annoying, and only more annoying for the fact that the guy who was dogging me had a much better attitude towards the layout than I did. Afterward, took a 10 minute break, then 10 minutes of superslow jogging, then a 15 minute progression/tempoish steady run that while better than nothing certainly pales in comparison to the training value of a three-lapper on the LL. Warm and sunny day with gusty breezes blowing throughout.