Wurtsboro Mountain 30k

2:00:24
5th overall out of 161
Pace/Mile: 6:28
Age Grade: 75.9%
Age Group Place: 1st of 41
Date: 3/28/2009
Location: Wurtsboro, NY
Comments: The Wurtsboro 30k was a very interesting, scenic and challenging (Hilly, with a Capital H) course. I actually lead the race for the first mile since the race went out slow. I stayed with the leaders through most of the hills until about four miles; there was a pack of four of us. I let them go after that (i.e. they dropped me) since I felt the pace was getting to be more than I could handle. I was on pace to break two hours up until about 25k which I hit in 1:40:03, however my legs were wasted by then and did not have another sub 20:00 5k in them. I would definitely recommend the race, not as a time trial, but as a different, challenging race. More accurate course description available at: http://www.sullivanstriders.org/30k_up_and_down.htm

Rover and Clover 5K

17:16.1

3rd overall out of 467

Pace/Mile: 5:34

Age Grade: 80.9%

Age Group Place: 1st of 75

Date: 3/15/2009

Location: Hillsdale, NJ

Comments: I decided to run this race since Hillsdale is one of the towns that boarder where I live and figured (wrongly, once again) that I would have an outside chance of winning the race. This was my first race as a master that I got an age grade Performance Level Percentage of over 80% (80.9%) based on compuscore's calculator. http://www.compuscore.com/agegrade/calculator.php This meets one of my yearly goals to achieve an 80 plp. The course was kind of poorly laid out with a 90 degree turn 100 ft or so into the race thru an opening about 10 to 15 wide and a few other oddities that one should expect at a local 5k run. By half a mile I was in 6 or 7th place with all HS guys ahead of me, however by 1.25 miles or so I moved into 3rd place and that is where I stayed since I was unable to make up any ground on 2nd. All in all I was very pleased with the time.