Goal heading into todays race was to test my MAF and cadence training. At my last 10K race I was able to keep cadence at 83 average rpm. So today was to keep it at a similar rate. For the last 2 weeks I haven’t done much run training per say which is not bad, especially with the fact that I really want to be as run healthy as possible for IRONMAN Sweden. So don’t want to aggravate my prior knee injuries.

Made sure to get into my assigned corral because otherwise it takes too much energy to get through a slower field. Yesterday was a high of 90 degrees, the weather Gods were with us this morning as it’s 30 degrees cooler at low 60s. Anh and I were able to warmup to the race start from our friends house who is babysitting the kids for us. This was a 2 mile warmup to the Brooklyn Museum start near Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Right at the start I was able to gain my run legs and be in the race. I know this race all to well to not go out too fast for the Prospect Park region of the race. I averaged about 7:20s for the first 5 – 6 miles. Then after the one hill I started to push the pace closer to sub 7:10 minutes per mile.

When I got to Ocean Parkway the race was really on for me. Did a 7:01 and 6:59 on 2 consecutive miles. It was at mile 10-11 that I had to slow down to a 7:12 mile as never before in a race, that a pain was coming from the right side of my waist. After slowing down during that mile and refocusing on good running form the pain started to subside. So from that point to the finish I just continued pushing striving for as a high of a cadence as I could maintain. In my sets of on course goals I was determined to make the last mile my fastest of the day, so I found a final gear and made mile 12-13 a 6:45 mile / pace.

Couldn’t be more satisfied with my performance today. At this point in IRONMAN training my run is about where it was in 2011 when I did IRONMAN Lake Placid. In fact I was 3 minutes off my best half marathon time at this same race of 1:32 that year.

Very proud of Anh’s performance as she is only 5 months off from child birth and was able to break 2 hours. She ran 1:57. Pretty solid day.