Drove down to Orem last night and crashed at my cousin's apartment there. Got up at 6, got ready and drove over to PG and got my number and stuff. I couldn't remember if the race started at 7 or 8 so I showed up in time to run at 7 but it ended up being at 8 so I had tons of time to warm up. Just jogged/ran around the neighborhood and parts of the course the whole time. About 30 min. before the race I put my flats on and did a few accels and stuff and stretched out a bit to get loosened up. Course looked fairly easy with the first mile being mostly a slight downhill. Second mile is mostly a slight uphill/level and the last 1.1 is mostly level with a little downhill at the end. Realized I forgot my watch but it didn't matter because I was just going to see what I could do. Expecting it to be fairly tough where I haven't raced in forever and have zero speed training under my belt in who knows how long. I figured I would call it good if I broke 17 by a few seconds. Boy, did I miscalculate. Started out and the first part I felt like this was going to be a long and painful race, but I kept the pace down hoping that I would have energy enough to make a decent performance. Legs are tired from Tuesday and this week. Stayed in the back of the lead pack of about 5 or 6 runners, most of them being college runners/ex college runners from BYU I think. There was a high school kid in there too who said he was going to break 17 so I kinda stuck with him that first mile thinking if I beat him by a little I would do alright. Hit the 1 mile mark going uphill and all of a sudden I got my second wind. The high schooler dropped behind and I started closing on 4th place. Got him. Got passed by another guy, passed him back a little before the two mile mark. Passed one more, running in second behind a guy who ran for BYU and feeling pretty good considering. Got passed again by a different guy with about .75 to go. Currently in 3rd. Rounded the final turn and could see the finish line about half a mile down so I started picking it up. Thought my kick was pretty good but got passed again with about 200m to go. Finished 4th overall. The clock had stopped at 15:00 so I didn't know what my time was...the guy that passed me right at the end said he got himself at 16:19 so I figured I was about 3-4 seconds behind him giving me a low 16:20's which I did NOT expect at all. And I didn't even feel that bad besides wanting to puke for a minute in the chute (don't worry I held it back). After the finish is where this gets really boring. Basically I cooled down and sat around and waited for an hour for them to get the awards thing going. Granted, there were a lot of runners for a little 5k like that, but that was my only complaint was the post-race organization. Awards took them forever because they thought they had to have a little drawing for everything under the sun. Ended up raining so they just hurried and read off names, but I didn't get my trophy until 2 hours after I finished. But that's alright I guess. I took first in my division (legitimately--I was really the first 19-24 year old across the line...the other guys were older I guess) and 4th overall. Actual time was 16:18.7. Winning time was 15:54. I think the course was pretty legitimate too as far as distance goes...it was easy for the most part (especially with the first mile being downhill), but I think the distance was pretty well on just from the way they had the mile markers and the 'one mile to go' marker. I don't own a Garmin so I dunno though. Oh, and I met Allie from the blog for the first time. As far as I know we were the only bloggers there but I don't know many from Utah Valley so I could be wrong. Overall I am extremely happy with this race. PR since being home off my mission by 22 seconds! I guess it's only my third 5k in that time but I'm just tickled. Didn't think I was in shape enough for that.
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