Great race, very nicely done, mile markers in the right place, water where they said, and more spectators than I had expected. They had more runners than in the past (I heard later) - which made the start a little rough (for me) - I started too far back and it took a while things to spread out. I was planning on taking the first few miles pretty easy anyway - so it wasn't too bad, but still a little frustrating. All and all I am excited about my middle miles - and in retrospect I wish I had pushed a little harder on the first downhill miles as I suspect I could have broken 1:39, but this race was more about checking my fitness than anything, and since I have not done any over-distance yet (my long runs have not been very long) I was worried about how I was going to do on the final miles - I was pleasantly suprised that the final miles weren't too bad after all! 1: 8:03 (lots o' people) 2: 7:49 3: 7:42 4: 7:42 5: 7:30 (had decided that I needed to start picking it up here, it was feeling really easy up to now) 6/7: 14:53 (water stop - there was one at 3 but I passed it up - I missed the mile 6 marker - 7:27 average for the two miles)
8: 7:26 (course flattens out, I started passing tons of people on this stretch)
9: 7:33 10: 7:25 11: 7:36 (start of gradual uphill climb) 12: 7:46 (suprised I was not slower here, I felt like I was crawling, but I was still passing people) 13.1: 7:52 - last mile was about 7:09, though it was pretty downhill I was still suprised. I couldn't really tell where the finish line was (even though I saw the lights, I thought it was a turn light thing like at Des News) - I saw Dean and he was yelling "250 meters to go" and I pushed it in. I was pretty happy overall, I did better than I had expected even with the lax start. Next time I will know to take the hills a little harder! I saw Sasha, Paul, Chad, and some other bloggers, it was a great day. I couldn't wait to get home and see how the rest of you did at Park City and Hobble Creek - Congratulations everyone!
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