I ended up being the captain for the Salt Lake County corporate games 5K for my company again. We had a better team this year but two of the guys bailed on me at the last minute. I was pretty sure we wouldn't do well as a team so I just wanted to improve on last year's performance. The race is at the Cottonwood complex and is 3 laps around the park. There are 7 short hills and the race is run completely on grass. I haven't done a very good job of mixing up my running surfaces and struggle whenever I run on something other than pavement. The field looked smaller this year but there were 2 guys that I was pretty sure were going to kill the course. The gun went off and I felt like I was stuck in the mud. It was really hard to get going. I quickly remembered that I felt the same thing last year when the race started. I typically attack the uphills too hard so I made the conscious effort of taking the hills a little easier during this race. At the top of the first hill, I was in 5th place and was passed by 3 more people shortly there after. The 2 fast dudes were pretty much gone and the rest of us were stretched out over about 15 yards. I realized that we were running really slow so at the top of the second hill I pushed the pace a little and moved by all of them and settled into 3rd place. There was a lady that was hanging about 15 yards behind me for most of the race. During the second lap, I really wasn't pushing the pace at all and it felt more like tempo pace than 5k pace. I didn't have the desire to push it to the next level. There was no way of me catching 2nd place and I was maintaining my lead on 4th. I decided to just hold this pace and hoped that the fear of being chicked would be enough for me to push the pace if I needed to. During the last lap, I started to hear the breathing of the girl behind me (I would make a joke about the heavy breathing of the hot chick but that would be inappropriate). I now had to make the decision if I wanted to push the pace or let her pass me. At the top of the last hill, I decided to stretch out my legs and push the pace. Really stretched it out going down the last hill and kept pushing during the last 0.2 miles. Finished in 19:34 which is 6 seconds faster than last year and a much better finish. I was hoping for something closer to 19:00 but at least it is a course PR. Certainly not a blazing time but it is good for me for this course. First place was 16:49 and second was 17:42. My lack of racing seems to be my biggest problem. The fitness isn't too far off but finding the desire to run at the next level of pain is not there.
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