This is the fifth year I've run this 10K. I like to run it because Rex Lee's wife grew up with my mom and she's always been kind to me when I've met her.
Last year this was sadly a 9K, but they got things fixed. This distance was good. This is a tough course to get a PR because of the hill. It is about 200 feet of climbing. This year the because of the start location, the hill was moved to mile 2 instead of 1. That made it tougher. I like to get that hill over with on very fresh legs.
I said hi to Mary Ann Schauerhamer at the start. She asked what my target was, and I told her 42:00. Turns out that she took it easy and ran a steady 42-minute pace the entire way. That threw me off at first because I was keeping up with her for the first mile with a 100-foot climb. The split was 6:41., which was too slow. Not a good start, lost 20 seconds. The hill mile split was 7:33. OK, I knew I'd really have to go negative splits now on the steady long downhill starting at the MTC. Mary Ann was less that 100 yards ahead.
For the next couple miles, I ran almost side-by-side with the third-place woman who had talked to me at the start. She would catch up, I would surge ahead, she would catch up, and we would do this over and over again. Good motivation.
Mile 3 was 6:19, and Mile 4 was 6:33. Good work. But than she surged ahead and I just couldn't find the push to keep up anymore. Time to hang on. Mile 5 was 7:02, still OK, but I lost the PR bringing it in at 7:16 pace. I just didn't have the motivation to red-line it to the finish.
I crossed the finish line in 42:24, in 26th place out of about 480 runners. I got secon in my age group. Senator Mike Lee announced the awards and of course joked about my name.
I missed the PR by 20 seconds, but that is OK. It is a tough course to PR on. However, I set a course PR by almost a minute.
Afterwards I met Keith Barton who beat me. I always compete with with him in my age group but am always just behind. We had a nice talk. He is going to run Squaw Peak for the first time and is planning on doing a Grand Canyon R2R2R. Its nice that my writings are inspiring road runners to give ultras a try.
p.m. four miles with the dog, Jimmer. I'm renaming the dog to Jimmer. I'm sure she will like the name. |