Badger State Games

I equated this set of races to the Olympics of Wisconsin winter racing. John Kann and I travelled to Wausau to participate in the Badger State Games. I had never participated in this race before, so it was a new experience. I was able to try multiple events. The first was the mile race (which actually was 1.2 miles according to the race director, Jay Punke). The first race was about 1/2 on open ski trails and 1/2 on singletrack through the woods. Starting out it was a fast start and I took off pushing the pace followed closely by Kris Borchardt whom I had met just prior to the race. I led up until about 200 meters before the end. With Kris right behind me heading through the final stretch of woods, I misread the trail and took 2 steps to the left in the wrong direction. . .enough for Kris to pass me and gain the advantage. He crossed in 6:46.7 and I crossed in 6:47.4. In all actuality the race was a dead stop at the finish and there was not 0.7 seconds between us. The 0.7 seconds is due to the fact the timing was manually done and the person pushing the buttons didn't have reaction time to press the buttons on the timer fast enough. Kris led by the length of a glove at the finish, so I settled for the Silver medal in the 1.2 mile race. In the 10K (which was too close afterwards, I found myself unable to hold the early pace due to pushing the limits of my running in the final stretch from the race just minutes before. I settled for a bronze medal with a third place finish, at 57:36.5. I was 4:03.9 behind the lead runner, but could not push the pace. My stomach was completely upset from the first race so I settled for a constant pace which would not upset it and could proceed no faster than what I was going. It was interesting that my pace/mile was under a 6 minute pace per mile for the first race going all out, but I struggled to maintain about an average pace of 9.3 minute/mile for the 10K which was a drastic difference. It would have been better to run the 10K first in my opinion while I still had energy to give.