Woke up the legs in the morning with an easy 4 miler and arived at Weber State about 2 hours before the race started.
I have mixed feelings about this race.... it wasn't bad but it certainly wasn't my best. Only 5 guys raced, and I thought I could challenge for the win, but I ended up running alone for most of the race and not running as hard as I needed to.
The pace was quick at the start, my first quarter was 73, the leaders 72, and I was trying to maintain contact. Last week's winner, Brian McKenna, and another BYU hopeful who beat me last week pulled away from me in the second lap, and like last week, I let them get too much on me. I went through 1600 in 5:00, they were 4:50, and by this time I was well into no-man's land, holding onto third.
The BYU hopeful dropped the pace well into the second mile, and I caught him by the 3200m mark in 10:01, another 5:01, not bad and I'm still feeling good. At this point, however, I chickened out from going after McKenna. He had 10 seconds on me, I knew I had second place locked in, and it just seemed like too much distance to make up.
So I slowed a little, running the next 800m in 2:38. I covered the final 800m in 2:30 with a final time of 15:44. McKenna finished in 15:30, which certainly wasn't out of reach with a mile to go. I'm kicking myself now for not gutting it out and going after him, so I just need to learn from my mistake and move on. I race him again next week, I want to forget about time and splits and just go after him.
So, like I said, not a terrible race, but a ways from my best.
Splits:
5:00
5:01 (10:01)
5:08 (15:09)
0:35 (15:44) | 