Run fast

I regained the title after last year's loss to Elijah Armstrong. This year there were a whopping 4 men in the race and 11 woman. Amiee ran faster than last year and finished 3rd. I joined Leo for his first 1K race. He was running well then tripped with about 200 yards left and finished the race in tears. But I am sure he will be back next year. He was the youngest competitor at 2.5 years old and for that he won a bag of swedish fish bigger than the size of his head.

Woke up at 3 am, picked up Nate at 4 am, got on the busses at 5:15 and to the start at about 6. Race got off at 6:30. I led through 5 miles then Nate started to slowly pull away. He ran low 5s from mile 6 through 8 and put about 30 seconds on me. He added another 15 seconds on me over the remaining miles and came in at 1:06:24. I finished in 1:07:10 which was only 12 seconds slower than last year. I am happy with the outcome considering I didn't really taper and ran a race last weekend. Allie! won the women's race and James also had a good showing. 2 mile warm up and 7 mile cool down with Nate, Justin, and Matt P. Matt P. finished in a solid 3rd.

Felt better than expected but tightened up later in the day.

Mid Mountain trail with Adam

11 meandering miles plus 1 fast lap at Sugar House Park and 2 marathon effort laps and Liberty Park.

Another year and another DesNews Marathon is in the books.  I knew going in that 1st place would be a very tall order given that Jon Kotter keeps getting faster and I only had a few weeks for solid training coming off the injury in the spring.

Woke up at 2:25, ate breakfast, drove to the busses at 3:30 and was lying in the grass as usual by 4:30.  Unfortunately Jon found me in the grass and was very chatty so I didn't get to rest much :) The race got off right at 5:30 and Jon and I stayed together until the top of Little Mountain. It took enough effort for me to stay with him that long so I had to let him go if I was going to survice. He slowly pulled away and by mile 20 on Foothill Blvd he was about 2 minutes ahead. I wasn't falling apart but I could definitely sense that a death march was slowly ensuing. I made up the hill on Foothill in OK shape then started down 5th South until I abruptly had to come to a complete stop because the TRAX train was coming and the gate had drop. I waited furiously for about a minute then got going again. Not only did I have to stand still for 1 minute I probably lost more time because my momentum was lost coming down the hill. That was a bummer but it didn't really matter because Jon was long gone and third place was about 20 minutes behind. I managed to hold it together decently over the last few miles and I finished in 2:28 and change. I figure without the TRAX stop and I would have been right under 2:27 which was about 1 minute slower than last year. Not too bad I suppose. Incredibly over the last three years I have run this race my split for the first 15.6 miles have all been within 6 seconds of each other. Unfortunately I don't know my splits for my 2012 race when I ran a course PR of just under 2:22. Now that this race is behind me I plan to run more trails for the next few weeks before getting back on road before STG.

Congrats to Jon for crushing a 2:22+ and to Allie for making her Utah comeback and finishing 2nd.