I guess you could say we lucked out on weather at Victory for the third straight year. I think it's been 50+ degrees each time I've done it, although today I was smart enough to remember how much colder I feel before races, so I wore 4 layers to packet pickup. I was feeling pretty lethargic and out of it during my warm up, which I've found says little more about how my race will go than whether I got a good sleep the night before. At the start of the race, a pack of four quickly dwindled to three. We hit 1 mile at 5:07 which felt about the appropriate pace and I thought: "oh, it's going to be one of THOSE races". However, mile 2 was a 4:42, which changed my mind on things- it was just a matter of someone likely messing up the mile markers. Miles 3 and 4 were in 10:01. During this time I moved into 2nd place and started to make a gap while the leader slowly built a gap on me. My last two full miles were (apparently) 4:53 and 4:49. Overall, I ran 30:33 and finished 2nd. Thoughts: 1) I'm proud of that time! That's 11 seconds faster than I ran last year, and my second fastest 10K road race ever. 2) 2nd place. I can hardly believe it. I have run six local 10Ks the past three seasons (Get in Gear and Victory three times each). I have finished in second place FIVE TIMES behind 4 unique winners. That is quite the track record (not to mention my 3rd, 2nd and 2nd place finishes at the Freedom run before that). As I thought about that leading up to the race, I wondered if it was simply a mental barrier. Although I finished just 11 seconds behind first place today, I do feel like I pretty much pushed it all I could though. 3) When I saw the age of 29 on my bib, I felt really old. Interestingly, I was the youngest runner in the top 5. There were only 2 other guys in their 20s in the top 10, which you had to run 32:XX to be in. Kudos to others for keeping up their fitness. Overall, I'm proud of my work today and happy to end what has been a unique season on a positive note.
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