My wife and I made the trip back down to St George last night and got a good night sleep at the hotel. When we arrived at the race that morning the temp in the car read 32 deg. A little chilly in shorts and short sleeves but it warmed up nicely a few miles into the race. I came to the race this year with higher goals than I did last year. I felt like I was in better shape than last year after running quite a few more miles the last 2 months than what I did last year. My main goal was just to beat last years time of 1:25:24 which was over 3 minutes faster than the year before. I was hoping I could take as much as a minute off of that. The race starts out with a gradual climb for the first 2 miles. A little more in the second than the first. I hit those in 6:22 and 6:31. The 3rd mile was 6:18 mostly down hill with a climb at the end. 4th and 5th continued through rolling hills 6:21 and 6:28. During the 6th mile I was still running a good pace but I wasn't feeling so good and started to fear I had gone out too fast. At this point my average pace was about 6:24 which was on pace for under 1:24 and I was finished with the toughest part of the course but my pace really started to drop off after that. I was at 6:28 pace for mile 6 just coming into the aid station at the end of the mile. I stopped quickly to chug a gatorade then ran up the steep hill to the mile marker and finished that mile in 6:37. The next mile should have been a fast one but I ended up at 6:37 again. Most of the rest of my miles were in the 6:40s. I did manage a 6:28 on mile 10 which was a slight downhill mile and I managed a 6:20 on the 13th mile after really picking it up for the last 1/4 of it. I looked at my watch a bit before the last corner and could see I was going to be very close to last years time. I had already picked the pace up for the last little bit but now I really put it into gear. I came around the last corner hard and kept it up all the way to the finish. Not sure how long the last stretch was but I know the 13 mile marker was a little less that 1/2 way down it so probably a bit less than .2 miles. Finishing time was 1:25:28 so 4 seconds short of last years time. It was a different course this year. I'm not sure if it was faster or slower. It had shorter hills but more of them. I'm quite sure if I would have paced myself better I could have run a much better time. I was thrilled with the time last year so I guess I should still feel pretty good about it. I won my age division the last 2 years [45 to 49] and would have won that division again by 20 seconds but I was beat by another guy in the 50+ division and had to settle for second. If nothing else it was a good start to my training for Boston in 3 months. Splits: 6:22, 6:31, 6:18, 6:21, 6:28, 6:37, 6:37, 6:43, 6:42, 6:28, 6:40, 6:50, 6:20, 5:00 min pace last .1
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