Now I finally know how the elite runners in last year's NYC Marathon felt. With the most stacked field in awhile, the best conditions in awhile, the buzz was that this was going to be an exciting race, course records were going to fall...which as we all knew, didn't happen.

That's sorta how I felt about Saturday's Club Team Championships. As far as Central Park races go, this was my favorite. The weather conditions called for an unseasonably cool day. The field was much, much smaller than normal (how bout 500 instead of 5000 peeps!) due to the club-only race and the separate men's/women's starts. Basically-all signs pointed to a good race...hence the "great expectations" in the title. Not to be...

Mile 1-8:03
Mile 2-7:52
Mile 3-8:13
Mile 4-8:19
Mile 5-7:43

Final result, 40:10 (8:02 pace)

Before anyone says it-I'm sure, just looking at the numbers, that it didn't seem like a bad race. However-last year-when it was almost 20 degrees warmer, much more humid, and I had tired legs from marathon training, I did this race in 39 minutes. (And in fact, my recent SF half time, on a much tougher course, predicted 39 minutes for a 5-miler too...)

I'm still not sure what happened. First mile-I felt I was still warming up a bit...2nd mile I made up the time a little bit on the downhill...3rd mile had the least crowd support...4th mile was Cat Hill, but I actually did a little better than I thought I would there. I looked at my watch and saw that I'd need a 7:32 last mile to get under 40...could I do it? Although there was quite a bit of cheering, it seemed a little more subdued than last year (and it seemed that there were a couple of teams who went out of their way to not cheer for me) though the Flyers were great, as usual..I tried to push it, but wasn't enough and was disappointed to see the 40:xx on my watch. Though apparently I wiped the disappointment off my face long enough to get nabbed by the NYRR photographer here...

But the non-competitve stuff was fun. I liked cheering our guys on in mile 1 and near the end, and our annual team picnic afterwards. And lots of the Flyer women, including myself were modeling our new fitted top...looked quite nice!! And later that afternoon, we took on CPTC in softball again...was a good time, but the fact that I was placed last in the lineup...I dunno, I felt once again like the fat, unathletic girl who always gets picked last for a team...meh.

As for the running stuff...I can't quite figure out what is going on. I can run a decent half, but I just choke so badly in the short races. I have been doing speedwork-though I admit the last coupla months...hadn't been going well between the mega-heat waves that always seem to crop up on Tuesdays, or the fact that some of the workouts were a little too long for hot days and I can't seem to get the effort in. Weekly mileage is decent, long runs are decent, so I really think that's where the problem is lying. Only problem is, I don't know how to fix it...

Guess no one said it was gonna be easy...