my makeup may be flaking

First UT race in 3 years. Apparently I have lost the ability to run downhill. I started out in 8th place and stayed there for the first 5 miles. I pulled up to the 7th place guy right as we went onto the dirt but by then my legs were really chewed up so I started to drop back a little. Coming out of the canyon I was caught by the 9th place runner, and we ran together the rest of the way. With about a mile to go I dropped the 9th place guy.

"Splits" 6:00, 5:18, 5:47, 5:50, 5:21, 29:35 for 5-10, 6:21, 5:45, 5:56

AM Hiked Big Baldy in Pleasant Grove.

PM 8.5 miles. Felt ok overall but my groin was still bothering me. Will take 3 days off.

AM 8 miles on MCT w/ Allie. Somehow I'm still sore from Hobbler.

First time doing Draper Days 5k since 2012, the day everything finally unraveled for me. I was kind of scared to return.

The start was a giant mess. They had the push-wheelchair runners lineup at the front but then didn't let them go early. Which is just...obviously a bad idea for everyone. Then they left up two road block which everyone had to go around. This mess probably only cost me about 3-5 seconds, but it was all quite avoidable.

Started off running behind Dennis Simonaitis, just like the good old days, and we slowly gained on the lead women (Nan+Sariah) as well as Sasha. Caught up to them right at the mile marker (which was way off). Then I pulled ahead of them all, with only Sasha coming with me. We ran side by side until about the 2 mile mark when we started climbing and I used my Atlanta legs to pull away.

With about 1k to go, Nan caught back up to me and encouraged me to keep up so I ran behind her the rest of the way. Very surprised to see 17:0x as I crossed the line, as my mile split was 5:42 and I felt like I was slowing down. Riley's garmin said the course was legit, so I'll take it. Best road 5k since early 2012 and only 10 seconds slower than what I did on a track at sea level.

I finished 13 seconds and 1 spot ahead of Dennis. In 2011 we fininished 6-7 in this race with about the same spread but 1 minute faster.

So now the race results have me as 17:07 (they changed for some reason) and they give everyone but me a 2-3 second difference between gun time and chip time. I definitely had to wait 3 seconds before I crossed the start line. That's what I get for not stopping my watch when I crossed the line.

From University Guest House along shoreline trail to the "H" and back.

4 by mile in 5:39, 5:48, 5:42, 5:42

4 mile tempo run on Murdock Canal Trail.

6:03, 6:02, 6:01, 5:52

My prediction for this race was 35:00, based on the couple of workouts and races that I had leading up to it. So clearly I destroyed my expectations.

My plan was to start pretty conservatively (5:30ish pace) for the first two downhill miles and then try to keep the remaining miles sub 6. First mile in 5:15 and it felt pretty easy. In the second mile, I picked found a nice rhythm on 500S that felt pretty sustainable. Was shocked to see that the second mile was 5:16. I tried to pick up the effort when i turned onto 1300E but it was just not happening. However, this was still good enough for a 5:32 mile 3.

Mile 4 was my worst mile (according to the course tool) as I was really just counting down the blocks until I was done with the downhill. I was really suffering here, but I wasn't getting passed and was occasionally picking people off. Another 5:31 mile for mile 4.

Making the turn onto 200E I could see the end of the downhill which was actually a relief and I picked up my intensity. Ran 5:25 for mile 5 (still aided). Then at about mile 5 I picked off Dave Taylor and then Sasha who latched on briefly. I ran a pretty strong last mile (7:02 for 1.2 5:46 pace).

Here's a table

After I was done, I ran up to Foothill to see the marathoners and then ran the last 10k of the course.

3 by 2 mile with 3 mins rest

11:49, 11:44, 11:39

This went much better than when I last did this workout about 5 weeks ago, but the times were still weirdly slow. As I noted before, the course tool says that you have to subtract ~35 seconds to get a flat equivalent. I don't know if it's really the terrain or if I'm just still sore from Des News 10k (which I definitely am).