Race that I won last year. Had some more local talent show up this year. Still, not my best performance, and I should have broken 17 at least. Thats racing though! Showed up, saw the eventual winner, figured I would have to have a great day to track him down. Started out hard and drafted off him through about 1 mile. We came through in 5:08, 2nd mile it was a 3 man race and we had seperated, this is where we turned into bad headwinds, about 20mph and running solo being a little guy that slowed me down a lot. Next split was something like 5:42 which was almost certainly affected by the wind. 10:50 at 2 miles, ran a 5:39 and a 34 second .1 to cross in 17:04. On the final stretch, I ran down the 2nd place guy, passed him and then had him pass me back before the line. Not much of a kick as it was directly east into the headwind and I was honestly worn out from battling it. Not a terrible effort, I feel like given normal conditions I would have been 16:40-16:45 today, probably not a winnin effort as the winner was 16:30ish into the wind. Still, My time today was 45 seconds faster than my winning time last year. So I am improving and its a plus that I ran so much faster on this course with less than ideal conditions this year. | 