My short spring road racing season culminated in Ottawa this past weekend with a 4th place finish in Canada's most competitive 10k. I was shooting for a top three finish but am pleased with the 4th. You never know who's going to show on race day and this year I didn't see a start list until the day before. One name on it immediately jumped out, DeribaMerga, last years winner who attempted to break the world 10k road record coming 24 seconds short. Seeing him in this race again assured the pace would be hot early on, and that it was. The gun fired, five guys flew to the front, a sixth zoomed past trying to catch the front pack. Noticing how he seemed to be in a full out sprint I decided to settle in and hope bodies would come back to me. I heard the leaders ran 2:35 for the first kilometer and were on world record pace for 3k (2:42/km pace). That told me I had made the right decision not to go with them. As I'd hoped the first body fell off the lead pack at 2k and then another shortly after. I used them as a target, helping to keeping my pace quick. There were no clocks on the course and I wasn't wearing a watch so didn't catch any splits. By 5k I'd caught and passed one guy and was closing on another. The second guy wasn't as easy to pass, tried rolling by at 6k but he hung on my tail. Now running into a head wind and not able to see 3rd place I decided to run tactical and make sure I had enough to beat this guy if it came down to a sprint. 7-9k we traded leads and I developed my plan, go hard 400m out! We were running neck and neck with 1k to go, had the feeling he was tiring but wanted to stick to my plan of going 400m from the finish. I stayed patient, started my move at 9.6k and quickly realized it wasn't going to be close, he was done. A big crowd lined the final stretch cheering enthusiastically. I really enjoyed the energy it created and tried to soaked a little up before crossing the line.
As usual the Ottawa Race weekend was an unbelievably well organized series of events. Amazing how well the whole weekend goes off. Thanks Ottawa :)
Eric Gillis, of Canada, is the first Canadian to cross the finish line with a time of 29:11.5 during the 10km race held during Ottawa Race Weekend in downtown Ottawa on May 29, 2010. Over 39,000 people are participating in Ottawa Race Weekend. Photograph by: Jana Chytilova, The Ottawa Citizen
Also this weekend was the first meet of the 401 Distance Series, held in Windsor, London, Guelph. Speed River had a number of good performances, check out results and Taylor Milne on facebook running 3:38.57 in the 1500m.
The last meet of the 401 Distance Series occurs in Guelph this Saturday, St James track at 7pm. Come on out an watch everyone!
My short spring road racing season culminated in Ottawa this past weekend with a 4th place finish in Canada's most competitive 10k. I was shooting for a top three finish but am pleased with the 4th. You never know who's going to show on race day and this year I didn't see a start list until the day before. One name on it immediately jumped out, Deriba Merga, last years winner who attempted to break the world 10k road record coming 24 seconds short. Seeing him in this race again assured the pace would be hot early on, and that it was. The gun fired, five guys flew to the front, a sixth zoomed past trying to catch the front pack. Noticing how he seemed to be in a full out 
1 comment:
Good Race and Good mark, congrat !!
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