Race report: New Hyde Park 8K

At least the t-shirt was different this year

Today's run (New Hyde Park 8K): 44:42

I ran my third race of the year this morning. It was the second year in a row that I've run this race. Last year I ran it in 44:42 for an overall pace of 9:00 per mile. This year I prepared well for the race, rested two days prior and wore my new Saucony's that have proven to help my performance. Last year I struggled to get through the race and this year I felt good and thought I'd managed a fairly competitive pace. Despite my preparation, greater familiarity with the course and feeling very strong I still finished the race at 44:42. Exactly to the second what I ran last year.

Pre-race check- in

I arrived an hour before the race and they had already blocked off the parking lot at the school so I had to find a place to park on a nearby street. I checked in and was happy to see that the bib number was kinda cool looking and the race t-shirt  was nicely designed. The shirt I received last year was so garish and yellow that my wife forbid me to wear it out of the house. No problems with this year's t-shirt. I wore my new Brooks running shirt and that served me well. I also wore my Saucony Grid Tangent 4's that I really like but they didn't seem to give me a speed benefit.

I have to admit that I'm a little suspicious of the course distance. According to my Garmin the course length was 5.32 miles. That is .35 miles longer than an 8K. I checked the Garmin calibration on Thursday with the Tangents and it was accurate to less than 1%. I'm puzzled why it would suddenly be off by 6.5% - an unusual variance for a device that's usually within 3% accuracy even without calibration. I Gmapped the course and came up with 5.1 miles which is about 3% longer than 8K. Nonetheless, I fully accept the NHP Runner's Club's measurement as well as my time. It's just that if the course was actually 5.1 miles I would have broken 9:00 per mile. Oh well!

Although I wanted to do better than 2009 at least today's effort proved that I'm consistent. I don't have another race on the schedule yet but I'm fairly sure I'll run the Dirty Sock 10K again in August. It was nice to run this race today in the middle of a busy time at work. It's hard to be stressed after giving your all for 44 minutes and 42 seconds. Besides that, I got a cool t-shirt!