This was my 4th straight year running this race. It's one of my favorites. In my 5 years of running races, every race I have done has been a course PR except for this race last year where I was 11 seconds slower than 2008. I kind of blamed it on the fact that '08 had the normal tailwind [for this race] and '09 had none. This year I really wanted to beat that time [59:32 from '08] and thought maybe I could go under 59 min. The weather was perfect for racing with temps in the low 50s and no wind at the start. I went out and was hitting about the pace I wanted for the first 4 miles. Up until this point there had been no tailwind and in fact a bit of a slight headwind at times. The 5th and 6th miles are where the substantial tailwind usually kicks in and I was planning on a couple of faster miles through here but today It just turned into a stronger headwind. I felt pretty good on the big hill that's the last part of mile 7 and the first of mile 8 and I just tried to stay relaxed and save something for the last 2 miles after the climb. At the intersection the light turned red with nobody directing traffic yet. Another guy and I ran out to cross in front of the stopped cars,who started going about then, and we had to do a bit of dodging. I felt better on the last 2 miles than I have in previous years and came in at 59:00. I was hoping the chip time might have me under 59 thinking I may have stopped my watch a split second late at the finish or early at the start but Milliseconds timing only posted the gun times and no chip times. I was only about 3 seconds back from crossing the start mat after the gun so it's not a big deal but I'd be ticked if I was one of the people that started 30seconds or more back. Maybe they'll have it fixed in the next couple days and I could still have my sub 59. My splits were: 1-6:06 2-6:17 3-6:16 4-6:20 5-6:22 6-6:21 7-6:38 beginning of hill 8-6:32 finish hill then flat.
9-6:14 .32-5:38 pace I was pretty happy with the 32 second pr even with the headwind versus tailwind on my old pr. Enjoyed the pre-race BBQ at Scotts house last night and enjoy some good food and good company and the chance to meet some bloggers I hadn't before.
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