NYRR Fred Lebow Cross Country 5K
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Van Cortlandt Park, New York, NY
Because I can't for the life of me figure out how to format all the results from the race (and believe me, I tried... for about an hour... While I should have been doing homework), I will just link to the results on the NYRR website.
Comments on the Race
Since I have no coach to write a nice review of the meet, and because all the local newspapers have better things to worry about, it looks like it's up to me to write the race report. This was the first "College" race that I have run, and I have to say that it wasn't quite how I expected it to be. First of all, there is no team aspect to the sport. That's because the Cooper Union Cross Country Team is made up of 3 guys and 3 girls (as far as I can tell). Out of those 6, 4 are freshmen - me, and the entire girls team. We are also running in an open meet, meaning anyone can run it. There was an invitational earlier in the morning on the same course, but we weren't invited.
Another reason it was a little different than what I was used to was the hills. I used to think that the Falthead course was bad... The course consisted of a mile in a flat field with bumps and poor footing, then turned into the woods. As soon as it entered the woods, it started going up hill. At that point, the trail also narrowed, and everyone was pushed together. One guy shoved me as I jumped out of the way of another guy who was pushed into my way. At first I didn't think much of the hills. They didn't seem to bad, and most of them were pretty short. The only problem was that they never went back down hill. There was a short hill followed by a shorter flat area, then another short hill. It went like that for the entire second mile.
As I climbed the hills my feet would slip back because the path was all loose gravel/dirt. I didn't put spikes in my shoes because I didn't know what the trail would be like, so I was still using blanks. When I think back, I don't really think that spikes would have helped anyway.
After the second mile, the course started to go back down. The downhills were much steeper than the uphills, and the trail was full of hairpin turns. It was impossible to get going too fast, because you just had to slow down again to go around a corner. While the entire second mile was uphill, only about half of the third mile was downhill, so most of it was very steep. Finally, with about a half of a mile to go, we came out of the trees, and we hit flat ground for the last stretch of the race.
My time was not exactally what I was hoping for, but I'm not too worked up about it. The hills hurt me, and I'm still getting used to being in the city. Next Sunday is a half marathon in Queens that I'm looking forward to.
-Jacob