Two months after chopping 18 seconds off his 10,000m personal best ZAP Endurance rookie Ryan Ford was back in Los Angeles for another attempt. This time around, Ryan shaved another 7 seconds off his personal best and 5 seconds off the ZAP Record with his 28:09 performance.
The race played out very similarly to the last attempt where Ryan very quickly found himself with a small chase pack of athletes running the same pace. The group occupied places 3-7 in the race. Ryan came through the halfway mark right at 14:00 and then the pace began to slow as the pack of 4 rolled into the 2nd half of the race.
As the group came into the final 7 laps of the race the pace slowed to 69 second laps from 67-68 second laps. Then with 6 laps (1.5 miles) to go the group run a 70 second lap. At that point Ryan hit the front and brought the pace back down to 67 seconds with 1 mile to go. His injection of pace trimmed the group down to 2 and kept his foot on the gas until they hit the bell lap when he tucked in behind Thomas George in 3rd place.
George was able to create enough space to separate from Ryan on the final lap, finishing 3rd in 28:06, but Ryan’s 28:09 finish earned him 4th place in a strong international field as well as a new PR and ZAP record. The mark was not an automatic qualifier for the US Championships in July, but outside of the Olympic Trials it is a time that would have got him into every other US Championship in history.
After the race Ryan took a very light week of training, even staying in LA to go do Disney Land with his family, who made the trip out to watch. Next up Ryan will be running the mile at the Music City Track Carnival on June 3rd and then the 5,000m at the Adrian Martinez Classic the following week on June 10th.
Dan and Tristin both competed at the Track Fest as well. Unfortunately, Dan came down with an illness as soon as the team arrived in LA. He gamely toed the line anyway and placed himself in the top 5 of the men’s 5,000m run through halfway. However, his body shut down on him a bit and he struggled home in a finishing time of 13:54.
Tristin’s left calf locked up on her during her pre-race strides the day before the race. She got treatment right up until she began her warm-up and battled through the first half of the race before her calf caused her to drop out of the race.
Coming off a light week, which was planned anyway, Tristin and Dan were both able to get back to hard training and are excited to ramp into the 2nd half of their spring / summer racing seasons.
You can find the full results from Track Fest here.