I left the house this morning at 5:30 to head down to Hyrum for the race. I wasn't sure what to expect because I've been running mostly slower miles lately nursing a sore hip that I've had on and off problems with for a long time. In the last month and a half I have only run 2 miles faster than 6:30 pace and only 8 miles under 7 min. pace. I was hoping to beat last years time of 59:32. This is the 4th year I've been running and racing and I have set a new PR in each race I've repeated. I was a little worried about this one because I had gotten in a few more tempo runs last year and was a little better prepared.
I started out with a 6:17 mile which was about what I wanted. Miles 2 through 5 were 6:21, 6:18, 6:19, 6:11. Somewhere in mile 6 I caught up to a guy that's been in my age group that I've never been able to beat [finished 2nd to him last year in this race]. I didn't feel like I could pick it up anymore to get by him and just hung back. Finished mile 6 in 6:23. There is a big hill about 1/2 mile long [and steep] that starts the last 1/4 of mile 7 and the first 1/4 of mile 8. I continued to run just back of the other guy up the hill and until about halfway through mile 8 I finally passed him. The pace was getting tougher and I finished mile 9 in 6:23. I was watching my pace on my Garmin and figured I was around 10 seconds faster than last year. The last .3 miles came out to .35 on my Garmin and I ran it at 5:58 pace. Unfortunately last year my Garmin had this stretch at .32 and I ran it at 5:42 pace. So between the Garmin error [or the way I took the tangents which is difficult at times because of the lineups of cars trying to get past the runners] and the much faster kick I made last year, I lost 21 seconds from mile 9 [on my Garmin] to the finish which made this years time for the race 11 seconds slower than last. However there is usually always a good tailwind for a few miles of this race and today there was none. In fact there was a slight headwind some of the way which felt good in the heat but doesn't do much for your time. I was a little bummed about not beating my previous time for the first time. I know at my age it is going to start happening at some point. When I got home I was looking at the results. In comparing to last year's results, I found there were 10 runners that beat me last year and ran again this year. On average their times were 1:36 slower this year [not including] the wheelchair racer who was 7 minutes slower. Only 2 were faster [one by 6 seconds and one by 34 seconds] but nobody else was within 49 seconds of their last years time. So I felt like 11 seconds slower was pretty good. I also finished 6 places ahead of last year overall with 128 more runners in the race. Seeing this made me feel much better. So all in all I'm happy with the results and my hip felt fine. Hopfully I've still got a few years of PRs left in me.
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