First race of the year this morning out at the Saltair Palace. Great weather for a January race... it was pretty warm by the 10am start time. Warmed up with Rob, did a few 30 second efforts, then we were off. Fritz and I ran together for the first mile. We had a nice tailwind and hit the mile in 4:46. Then Fritz dropped off a bit, and once we hit the turnaround (and headwind) I backed the pace off to more of a threshold effort. I felt like I had a few more gears in my legs, but just didn't mentally feel like suffering. I'm a baby! Next two miles were 5:00 and 5:01. Last 0.1 was 31 seconds. Finish time of 15:20. I looked back at all the old results posted online from the winter series, and this ties the fastest time run on this course. I should have listened to Andrea and pushed the last bit a little harder! Fritz ran well and finished in 15:50. Cooled down 6+ miles w/ Emily B, Devra, Allie, and James. A nice showing for the blog today - top 3 guys, Rob winning the masters race, Emily and Allie going 3-4 in the women's race. And Devra winning was great too - she's not on the blog but we run w/ her enough that she is still part of the crew! This was a good first race of the year for me. Very controlled effort - I'm in a good place right now as I start the buildup towards Boston. Way, way, way ahead of where I was at this point last year. Won a $100 New Balance gift card for my efforts (although I can't wear New Balance stuff... haha). And this was also apparently the RRCA state championship - so I'm the Utah State 5K champion, and I have a coaster to prove it! :-) Fun morning. Andrea took a bunch of pictures. Here's her full gallery: SLC Track Club 5K ... Allie's pics from the finish are especially good. 
PM - Busy afternoon! Came home, wrote this race report, then went to TCBY and met up with Allie, James, and Andrea's co-worker from Brazil. We filled up on Fro-Yo, then went up to Alta for the afternoon. They all snowshoed and I played around on my rando skis. Really nice to be up in the mountains on a beautiful afternoon. I have some good pictures and will post them tomorrow. Once we finally got down the canyon (traffic was a mess so we stopped at Snowbird for a while and got some hot chocolate), I got out for a 4 mile shakeout run and it felt good to stretch out my legs. 
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