What a morning woke up early to look outside to see that it was dumping outside and the lightning was going crazy!! But by the time I started my drive up to Huntsville the rain had stopped so that was a good thing too. On the way up got in my race breakfast of a Rockstar Recovery and PowerBar. Met Riley and ran into Albert. So the 3 of us warmed up together. Since the lines were so long for the bathrooms I showed Riley where the secret bathrooms were. Fantastic no line at all. Managed to sneek about 5K for warmup with 1 stride. As the race got going the pack split pretty fast. Riley, Ken, Jake, Albert, Nate and Bret. Pace felt comfortable for the 1st and 2nd mile. Splits were 5:29; 5:18. After mile 2 I decided to push the pace a little bit to see how the legs would respond. My hope was that my legs responded well and I could've hit a zone hitting anywhere between 5:20- 5:25 splits. After a 5:09 mile my legs were heavy. From there my splits slowly got slower and found myself in no mans land around mile 7 after Ken had to hit the restroom and continued to do so until mile 10. My ultimate goal was to catch Nate but he maintained the gap and I just couldn't get my legs moving under 5:30 pace. Overall it was definitely a harder effort then I would've liked but at the same part I have to remember the ultimate goal is St. George and this training will pay dividends for that race.(knock on wood). Splits for 4-13.10 5:26; 5:45; 5:31; 5:45; 5:45; 5:47; 5:50; 5:45; 5:36; 5:49; :36 seconds for last .10 In the past for this race my splits were low 5:30s to high 5:30s, but as my 3 year old would tell me "It is what it is" Plan for the next couple weeks is to nail out some 80 mile weeks(school permitting). Get some good hard long runs in and hope for the best. Cooled down with Ken, Riley and Albert for 3 miles. Hung around got some awards and snagged a cool Camelbak bottle from the raffle and then Riley talked me into to 1 more mile to get over 20 for the morning. 4.05 cool. Congrats to everyone who ran today!!
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