my makeup may be flaking

It was really cold so I did a kind of weak sauce fartlek. Basically I would start running fast for a bit and then gradually peter out to a jog. Kept that up for like 4 miles.

AM 12.9 miles

Figured if I'm not going to run fast I should at least go far.

College football playoff 5k. The winner got two tickets to the national championship game, essentially a $3000 prize for first place (men +women). So even though it was cold (about 25F) at the start, there was plenty of competition.

I got out really slowly and was in about 50th place at the first turn. Moved up to catch a big pack of women at the mile (5:20), including 2:43 marathoner Lacey Krout. The men's leaders were looooong gone as 8 guys were through the mile in sub 5 and the leaders were probably sub 4:30. First mile was very downhill and thus really fast.

I caught Bridget Lyons (1:13/2:35 elite woman+UGA grad) just after the mile, but she was having none of that and surged. We stayed together for about half a mile until I took the lead going up a slight hill. The only person within striking distance was another woman wearing Clemson gear. I hit the second mile in 11:04, Bridget and I passed the Clemson woman. She was now in 1st place and I was still just some schmuck.

We saw Allie at about mile 2.2 and she cheered for Bridget, prompting her to surge ahead of me again. The last mile of this race manages to be all uphill so the time was slow. Bridget and I went back and forth a little bit before she put on the after burners in the last 400m. She ran 17:23, I'm not really sure what my time was yet, but I was only a couple of seconds behind.

Men's race was won by Rob Mullet (a 2016 olympian from the UK) in 14:40.

4 by Mile on beltline in 5:32 avg 

38.5,38.0,34.9,35.1 

Dist	Time	Pace	xDist	xPace
2.85	17:52	6:16	2.99	5:59
1.93	12:25	6:26	2.08	5:58
1.14	7:26	6:31	1.19	6:15
2.45	15:30	6:20	2.57	6:02
1.70	10:16	6:02	1.73	5:56
10.07	1:03:28	6:18	10.57	6:00

10 miles at 6:18 pace. Nice temperature, but a little damp out which made things slippery. 

Crazy race. The starting line was 100meters wide like a cross country start. We even started out with a 400meter sprint across a huge field in Piedmont Park (the meadow) narrowing into a short steep hill. After that it was mostly road, winding through the park with bike marshalls yelling at each other to change the configuration as we navigated the different loops.

After the little climb I was in about 20th place but I could see a large lead group of 10 people. I fought like mad from about 500m to 1 mile to close the gap to the leaders. I picked off a couple of people dropping off the pack and had almost made contact when I reached the mile (5:34) in 7th place. The mile mark was at a top of a long hill and I guess this was the point that the top guys decided they were going to break it open. The top three guys pulled away, but I still managed to move into 4th.

Two guys stayed with me until about mile 2 (11:04) but then I started to open a little gap. I thought I would have a shot at sub 17 but somehow the last mile was really slow. Turns out most of the people I was running against were teens, which makes for an intense race.

3 by two mile with about 500m joggin recovery

11:45 (3:57, 3:57, 3:51)

11:43 (4:01, 3:51, 3:51)

11:48 (4:03, 3:56, 3:49)

4 by 900ish on beltline (3:13,3:17,3:07,3:15)

4 by 400 77, 79,74,78

4 by rhino hill

Had to stop running on the way to work because my foot hurt.