Race Report: Yankee Homecoming 10M

Held in the pretty town of Newburyport, Mass., the Yankee Homecoming 10-miler is a classic New England race with a thirty-year history, including a run of several years as a New England championship event. Its prestige and generous prize money attract some very good runners (the course record is 48 something), and the great town atmosphere attracts fields of well over a thousand runners to Newburyport-- on a Tuesday night in late July/early August!

Although the race doesn't start until 6:30 p.m., there are years when the heat and humidity are so oppressive that good runners are absolutely fried after running here. Last year was particularly brutal, and the carnage included one runner from my club who started off running 5:40 miles and finished running 7:00 miles.

This year wasn't so bad as that, but with the temperature around 80, an army of townspeople were out in force with hoses and sprinklers to provide relief to stricken athletes.

I started well, with the slightly downhill opening miles passing in 5:46 and 5:50. I was running comfortably and felt no distress. As we reached two miles, the pack of 10M runners reached the tail end of the pack from the 5K race, which had started 10 minutes earlier. It was a bizarre experience to be weaving through walkers, strollers, and joggers for about a half mile. It was like lapping someone, only you were lapping 500 people spread all across the track, and it took 4-5 minutes to get by.

Maybe it was the weaving and worrying, or maybe I had been fooled by those first two miles, but I found that the apparent easiness of the early pace had been a mirage. I ran the 3rd and 4th miles at around 6:00 pace and it felt much harder than it should have. I was feeling the effects of the heat. At 4.5 miles, I began climbing the longest hill on the course, which goes on for a little less than half a mile. I struggled up the hill, and noticed that everyone around me was struggling about the same. I could see that 60-year-old Larry Olsen, a legend in New England road racing circles and a guy who had finished one place in front of me in our last race together, was about 20m ahead. he didn't look good either.

Over the next mile, I tried not to think about how far it was to the finish, and instead concentrated on not losing ground to Olsen. When he slowed at around 6 miles, I put in a little surge and went past. It was the last moment I would feel anything resembling "good" until well after the race was over.

Although I was not running fast, I was feeling like the pace was still taking a heavy toll. I was having what for me is a characteristic response to running in the heat -- a rapid increase in perceived effort accompanied by extreme difficulty focusing. This was happening even though I was running a pretty tame tempo. I could only hope that the rate at which my body was cooking itself would postpone my demise until after I had crossed the finish line.

Between 6 and 7 there were two short uphills that really bit into my reserves. Thankfully, mile 8 was mostly flat with a long gradual downhill. I began to think I would be ok. As I passed 8 miles in 48:04, I still believed I could run two more miles at 6:00 pace and maybe go under an hour. That wouldn't be too bad.

At around the 8M mark, we turned left onto the road that I knew led all the way to the finish. It was slightly uphill, so I tried to maintain a steady rhythm and hope for the best. I was running next to another runner at this point, and as we came around a bend, I heard him mutter something like "uh oh." Sure enough we were climbing again. I pressed on and opened up a gap on this guy. It was not a good decision on my part. As I crested the rise and looked up the road, which continued at a gentle uphill grade as far as I could see, I started unraveling.

It came on quickly. I was breathing quite hard and I felt a sharp, sudden pain in my side. My stride became choppy, which made the side stitch worse, and I started gasping a little bit. Where the hell was the 9 mile mark? I looked down at my watch and it read 51:47, which meant I still had another 2+ minutes to get to 9 miles, and then I still had to run the last mile, which I knew from having jogged it before the race was a long gradual uphill.

My mantra became "Get to 9M!" It might have gone better for me if I had simply relaxed my pace for a bit, but I seemed locked into the pace I was runing and which I could not sustain. The higher functions of my brain seemed to have been de-activated.

I made it to 9M and lurched awkwardly into a walk. I walked for about 20-30 seconds, catching my breath and stretching out my arms and shoulders to make the side stitch go away. Three people went by me during this interlude. Larry Olsen was not among them, but I knew he was back there. I started jogging, and then running again.

The break had cost me my precious six-minute pace, but it had given me new life. My breathing was normal end-of-race breathing again. The side stitch was almost completely gone. My stride was functional. I set off in pursuit of the last person who had gone by me. I caught him and went by, not really caring, but relieved to be running again. I finished with an official time of 61:00. Slow! In fact, a minute slower than what I was expecting to run with two miles to go!

But... and it's amazing how this small thing salvaged an otherwise disappointing race, unlike last time, no 60-year-olds (or 50-year-olds for that matter) finished ahead of me.

Yankee Homecoming 10M Results