This morning was surprisingly hot and humid morning for the NYRR Fitness Games 4 mile run. The race was split into Men and Women and thankfully the men got to run first at 8:30am because by 9:30am the heat was on.

Since I am still coming off an injury, have a 16 mile run planned for tomorrow and trying to take it easy I decided I was not going full out for this race and run sub-7:00/miles. This hope was almost destroyed when I ran into Mario at the start, one of my Marathon training partners from last season and a fast runner. Mario has run Comrades Ultramarathon this year in South Africa (see earlier post) and is also training for this years NYC Marathon and did I mention fast.

Right then I had to make a decision to leave Mario as he was planning on running 6:30/miles and I was not ready for that pace. The field was not too crowded and I was able to run without the usual jostling at the start. First mile was run at exactly 7:00 minutes and I felt pretty good, the second mile was another 7:00 minutes and still feeling good but decided to dial it back. The course was coming into unshaded area and it was hot, so took a little gas off. Ran the next 2 miles at a 7:30 pace and finished in 29:06, pretty much what I wanted.

I have to give a shout out to Eve F, the only other DOFB member to make it this morning for this run. She had it worse than me starting an hour later and I know it was bad when her text just said “Hot, Ugh!”. Even with those conditions looks like she ran the race in 33:32, an 8:23/mile pace. Nice work!!