Blue Points 5k - Rewind 8.8.09

Yesterday, the sixth race, Blue Points 5k, of the RFYL Grand Prix was held over by Bank of American Stadium in down town Charlotte, NC. Due to road work on Stonewall just passed Tryon, the course ended being run in the reverse direction. Several people were worried that by running the course in opposition direction that they might be running a longer course. Rest assured, in comparing my Garmin records from last year and this year, I ran the exact same distance – 3.14.

And major "kudos" need to go out to the race organizers for realizing the bottle neck 1300 runners would have had if they had headed up Stonewall and been funneled down to one lane. The complaints about running up the Stonewall hill would have been nothing compared with the number of runners complaining about trying to pass through a 5ft wide section of road.

For my own personal assessment of the race, running the course in reverse was definitely tougher. While Stonewall plateaus in several sections, the road continues to raise even passed Tryon. This leaves the runners with a shorter downhill section to the finish and less room to sprint past a follow competitor. Mentally it is also tougher because the B of A stadium is visible from the 2 mile mark which makes you want to push the pace even faster.

During my warm, Steve and I hooked up for prerun of the course. Which I suspect, was good for me. Seeing how the hills were laid out on Stonewall help hone my racing strategy.

Going out with an even pace and banking a little time down Morehead St, I was able keep a slight lead over my follower Master's competitors as each of us tackled the hill in our own way.

Milton M. came down from Salisbury to race. Milton has been around years and is a solid runner no matter what the race distance is. Mark Cox was close behind Milton and Steve Spada quickly followed those two.

After race Peter B. and Pete K. were up for some cool down miles with me. Having a group to run a cool down with makes the post race recovery run all the more enjoyable. We ended up running about 5 miles

So now, there are 3 more races left in the Grand Prix: Greek, Brixx, and Lung Strong in roughly the next 10 weeks. Everyone will be looking at where they are in the GP standings and will try to figure out if they can move up a few spots. Still other people will probably be headed to track in hopes of finding that last ounce of speed that they need on race day.

Good luck to everyone and you only have 3 more races the GP this year.