Blog Roll - Mike Sayenko

US Club Cross Country Championships

It has been six weeks since New York City Marathon. The recovery process was extremely good to me, as I was amazingly able run up and down stairs the day following the monumental 26.2 mile effort with a breeze. This was the quickest and least painful recovery process from the five marathons that I have run. That made me excited, and I was itching to start running after only a week off.

Of course I had my horizons set on my next obstacle, the US Club XC Nats in Lexington, KY. Club XC has been an annual event for three years now and brings back the team camaraderie which is truly missed since graduating from UW. We brought a full open womens and mens teams which made it that much funner. This is the only reason why I run every year, well that and a fun after party.

The Race
I got out hard, had to get in position. If you want to possibly win you have to get out, so I did. I was hoping for a top 10 finish, even tho I'm coming back from a marathon, and its been five weeks of total running. Anyhow the course is one of the most challenging courses I have ever seen. Up and Down the entire way, no flat sections period, and really un-even surface. Besides that it was perfect racing conditions, around 40º and not much wind.

As I got out, I was about top 15 through the first 5k, after passing the mile in 4:42, 3 miles in 14:19. Then I started to feel the pace, and dropped back to 20th or so... coming through 5 miles in 24:16, I started to pick people off again, and caught back up to Mark Mandi with 400 to go. At that point with spit all over my face I just dug as deep as I could, and finished 17th in a new XC PR of 30:30 for 10k.

Our team finished 6th, which tied the best finish ever (only 16 points out of fifth, done only twice)... all this without the services of three big guns, one of which was injured (Mike Kilburg) but decided to grind it out, a truly gutsy performance.

From here its time to get ready to run with the best in Houston for the USA Half Marathon Champs where I PR'ed last year in 63:52, I am looking to improve on both my place and finish in 2010! Check back for results and more!

Race Schedule From here:
1/17/2010 Houston Half - USA Champs
1/31/2010 ING Miami Half
2/13/2010 US XC Champs or Husky Classic 5k

And from there the rest of the season will be decided.