my makeup may be flaking

Had to go back to Riverton to defend my 2k and 5k crowns.

We didn't arrive nearly early enough to get a good warmup in which is obviously a problem for any race, but definitely a problem for a 2k. I also didn't manage to start my watch in time so I don't know what I ran for the 2k yet (6:35?).

At the start of both races there were tons of little kids who wanted to sprint the fast 100meters, so I went all the way over to one side of the road so I didn't step on anyone. I ended up losing a ton of ground to one guy in the mad sprint at the start and I never was able to close it. It's probably the fastest I've run for an extended period of time in a while and my lungs were burning by the end.

We didn't have much turnaround before the 5k and so I just went back to the starting line. The 5k was truly massive this year, it seemed. People started out slightly less crazily in this race and I was up with the leaders after about 400meters into the race. The winner of the 2k (Billy) was running next to me along with two highschoolers and a guy in blue. The pace felt really slow to me but I just couldn't find another gear and I was definitely thinking "oh yeah, I just ran a marathon". Anyway I just tried to keep pushing and hope that my steady pace would be enough to drop everyone. It wasn't.

The course is an out and back. About 400meters before the turnaround there is a little downhill and Billy took a substantial lead on me. I was around 8:30 at the turnaround with blue guy about 1-2 seconds back and Billy in the lead by about 5 seconds. Billy quickly faded in the 2nd mile and soon it was blue guy and I running side by side. With about a kilometer to go he managed to pick it up just a little and I was already running as fast as I could. I did end up negative splitting by 10 seconds but it wasn't enough, I ended up 8 seconds back.

Anyway, I was happy that I got my goal of sub 17. It was not an optimal day in terms of warmup, temperature, etc.