Track and Field Blogs - Luke Humphrey

The segment wrap up! Well my 2009 racing season came to a close this past Saturday on the track on the campus of IUPUI. Many of my friends have asked to tell them about the race. What better place to do that than with a blog.

The race was part of the Indiana Invaders track series. For the past few years, they have put on a 10,000 meters in the fall. To me it seems like a pretty good idea. You can get a qualifier early and then focus on training for Nationals, rather than chasing times all spring and being burnt out by the time June rolls around. Anyway, the point is that it’s not a big meet. In fact, there were six people in the race, three of which were rabbits.

It was a nice night, pretty cool and by the time we started there wasn’t much wind at all. The track is really nice. A layer of mondo over cement, so it’s a hard track; great for racing! The straightaways are shorter, which allows for big wide turns that won’t slow you down as much as tighter turns. The stands were full. All of Christian’s family was there. If you add the watch keepers and Coach Pete Rea, there were roughly 20 people even at this thing! Needless to say, everyone was calm. it felt like we are lining up for a time trial, not a race.

The three rabbits did a great job. A couple guys were mid-distance guys were just going as long as they could at 68-69 second laps. The main rabbit was going to take us through 6k. The plan was to hit the 5k in 14:16. My open 5k pr is 14:15, just for record. So, with that said, I wasn’t sure what to do. Since there was no real pressure on this race, I decided to just go after it and see what happened. I fully planned on going through 5k and be holding on for dear life.

Greg said “ready, set, GO!” as we didn’t even have a working starting pistol! We were off. The three pacers, Dave, Christian, and me all single file. I could tell we were fast, but was hoping we were. If it felt hard and we were slow then it was going to be a looonngg night! We hit the 400 in 66 something. Pete Rea yells across the track, “Slow Down!” The next lap was 71. But, from that point on we were right on, anything from 68 to 69 seconds. I didn’t look at my watch, but we rolled through 1600 meters in 4:35 and if felt comfortable. The 3k split was 8:35 and 3200 was 9:10. Still felt comfortable. I tried to zone out and just stayed in my position as the caboose. The next thing I know, we come through 5k and Pete just says, “14:17- great job guys!” We were down to the one rabbit at this point and he just kept cruising. I thought, “Holy Crap! I’m gonna run 28:40 today!” I tried not to think about just running my fastest 5k in 4.5 years, or the fact that I haven’t run a 10k on the track since June, 2005. I felt tired, but ok. 6k came and went. We were still in a single file line. Our rabbit hit 6k and kept on going. He went all the way to 6600 meters. At that point were still all together in a line. We made it another lap. I was the first to go. The pace caught up to me. Then Christian fell off. Dave kept on rolling. My 68-69 quickly turned into 74’s. I managed to man up for a 70 last lap, but still crossed the line in 29:20. The fastest 10k I’ve run since March of 2005 at Stanford.

I was far from disappointed. I haven’t run an interval workout faster than 4:40 pace in years. That’s something that will change now. I haven’t really raced on the track in forever. I nearly ran a 5k pr with another 5k to go. I was 3k away from blasting a good one. Overall, I am excited. You go to Stanford in March, turn that 14:17 into a 14:25-30, good things will happen. I can come back in 14:20-25, have people to pass and a really good atmosphere to run in. This is all very, very close to all coming together! Plus, I’ll be wearing the new Brooks Wire- Whooh Baby!!!