The Utica Boilermaker is one of those races I’ve heard a lot about and I finally raced it this past weekend. The race began at 8am in cool temperatures, which I figured would produce relatively fast times for that course, I figured wrong. The first mile was a shade under 5 minutes and I was with the leaders. I split two miles in 10:00 although the leaders had recently made a move and I was back in 12th or 13th place. I really wanted to be in the top 10 so I started picking up the pieces and came through 5km in 15:29, 9 seconds in arrears of the leaders. The two reasons why the first 5km were slow was that it was mostly uphill and there was a headwind. As I made my way up to mile 4 (where you crest the 300 foot elevation gain) in 20:01 I caught places 7 and 8 and continued on to run a 4:20 mile downhill to mile 5. A little later we dropped one guy and picked up number 6. I was doing quite a bit of leading in our little group and was feeling confident until we started another decent from mile 7 to 8 where I got dropped. I gained a little on places 6 and 7 in the final mile but I still finished 9 seconds back of them.
Overall I was very happy with my fitness but I was not too happy with my race. I feel I let 6th place go and that is why I’m not overly happy with the race. I wasn’t able to get into that anaerobic zone towards the end. I simply haven’t done enough of that specific work and without those workouts I’m not going to feel confident enough to get into a little debt and ride it out. This doesn’t worry me too much about my main goal this summer, the marathon on August 22. Sure it would be better if I were to be in, say, 13:35 and 28:20 shape but from where I came from and only 40 days to go my best bet is to train specifically for marathon pace. That isn’t to say I won’t have a 5 X 1 mile workout scheduled in a couple of weeks but, the majority of my work will be focused on long race pace. There are still gains to be made throughout my training on different levels.
I brought down my mileage a little for the race and ran 152km last week, which is still higher than my highest week leading up to Ottawa (146km). The next three weeks will be pretty high mileage for myself to gear up for Berlin.
The crowds at the Boilermaker were amazing. People were lined up for pretty much the whole course and at times were quite deep and always loud. Tons of music playing on the side and a lot of partying. They know how to do an awards ceremony too. Saranac Breweries is the race sponsor and they host a party for 30 000 people with a concert. In the middle they bring out the top ten on stage as well as the top three Americans. It was pretty cool looking out on such a sea of people. Meet directors should all take a trip to the Boilermaker race and learn how to do an awards ceremony properly, which is quickly (not drawn out and boring).
I was the top non-African finisher this year and had the top North American finish since 1993. My three 5km splits were 15:29, 14:50 and 14:59.
The guy who finished second is the World Junior Record holder in the Marathon 2:06:15. The guy in third holds the World Youth Record in the 10 000m at 27:02.
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