I love thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorite holidays, but not for the obvious reasons. Yes there’s the food and family and friends, but for me, there’s one other thing as well: the Manchester Road Race. Every year since 2008, I’ve lined up on Main St. in Manchester, CT with 15,000+ other runners on many a cold, or snowy, or even sometimes (rarely) sunny Thanksgiving morning, to go and run just under 8 kilometers for the hell of it. The best thing about it? This race never gets old. Whether it be seeing old friends again, bumping into people you only see at the race but recognize because you’ve started together for 8 straight years, or all of the ridiculous costumes, the Manchester Road Race is always an amazing experience to be a part of.
The start line. (You can see my head to the left of Goeghegan)
This year was no different. When I first got to the course at 8am this morning, looking down Main St. was like seeing an old friend again for the first time in forever. The street was still mostly empty, filled just with the race barricades and some volunteers starting to get ready for the oncoming horde of runners. I like going early, when its still quiet, to soak in the atmosphere and really mentally prepare myself for the race. There’s just something about going to the same place year after year that gets you thinking about just how much has changed since that first incredibly cold morning 8 years ago as a freshman in high school, till now returning for my 8th race as a college senior. Maybe its the year after year unchanging consistency that Manchester gives, or just the sheer amount of memories, but I’d be lying if I said you didn’t get a strong case of the feels while looking down that street.
Over the next hour people really started to flow in, and by the time I got back from my warmup, Main St. was filled sidewalk to sidewalk for over a 1000 meters back with over 15,000 other runners, with both sides lined with even more spectators. Luckily, having gotten the highest qualifier the past several years, I’m able to go right up in front to the U-30 corral. I knocked out my usual joint mobility and drills routines, stripped off my sweats, and started counting down the last few minutes till the gun, all while joking around and catching up with friends in the corral, many of whom I hadn’t seen since last year’s race.
I wasn’t lying about the amount of people.
Soon enough though it was time to race. As the barriers dropped and we all pushed up to the start line, I found myself in the 3rd row of the race, immediately behind professional runners Donn Cabral and eventual winner Will Goeghegan. That was pretty cool. There was no time to fanboy, however, because as soon as I noticed them, the gun sounded and we were off in a dead sprint down Main St. in order to get good positioning ahead of the thousands of people behind us. I had planned on going out conservatively, but whether it was the adrenaline of starting so close to the front, or the guy in the Thor costume sprinting out to a 50 meter lead over the first 200, I found myself hitting the 800m split in 2:35. Being a tad fast and quickly approaching Highland Street Hill, I backed off and hit the 1st mile maker in a much more reasonable 5:44. Then it was time for Highland Street Hill, aka Heartbreak Hill, a 1.4 mile steep climb up to and past mile 2 of the course. It always sucks and the hill didn’t fail to hurt today. I was okay for about the first half mile, but then my lack of training over the past few weeks kicked in and I completely died. Seeing Highland Park Market approaching and marking the top of the hill was a beautiful sight. I split a miserable 6:48 mile, my slowest of the race by 45+ seconds. Luckily, massive uphills are followed by massive downhills, so while I was gassed pretty bad after Heartbreak, I recouped fairly well on the next very downhill mile. This is the part of the course where being 6’2″ really helps out, because I can just open up my stride and make up a lot of ground on people who passed me on the uphill. I took just about a minute off of the previous mile, running a 5:53. The rest of the course was fairly flat from here, so it was all about grinding from there on out. That proved to be pretty difficult. Clearly I’m not 100% back in fitness, because I barely pushed out at 6:09 through mile 4, and then a 4:21 split through the last 1300m. Seeing that finish line was a huge relief, and I actually managed some meager form of a kick, knocking off a few places over the last 150 meters for a final time of 28:55, finishing 218th out of 12,419 finishers.
I may not be the fastest, but I always win best uniform.
Even though I knew I had missed all of October’s training with bronchitis, and had only been easing myself in through November, I definitely still overestimated my fitness going into this race. No matter what, I just couldn’t seem to lock into a pace and cruise, everything felt red-liningly awkward. Definitely a lot of rust to shake off as well. It was encouraging that I was able to slightly recover from mile 3.5 through the end and make up ground, but I’m still off of where I need to be. But, given how handicapped my training has been, this gives me a solid basepoint to go off of for my training from now on. Now its onward and upward from here!
Run John Run! 