The final installment of the "winter" series out at the SaltAir this morning - between the WIND and the fact that this one was a 15K, the overall turnout seemed to be a lot lower... but we had a big crew from the blog representing. Originally my plan for this race was to hit 10K in ~32 minutes, and then try to hammer the last 5K. But when my jeep was getting tossed all over I-80 on the drive over this morning, I realized that negative split plan wasn't going to happen. The wind (according to NOAA's station at the airport) was consistently 20-30mph from the NW with gusts around 40mph. And that means major headwind on the second half of the course. So I changed my strategy to "go out quicker and hang on." My garmin decided to erase all the data when I plugged it into my computer, but I can piece together most of the splits. I ran the first 7.5K in ~23:32. All of the splits were either 5:02 or 5:03 for the first 5 miles. Pretty consistent. After the 180 turnaround we hit the hurricane, and the pace slowed down. I ended up running the second half of the race in 24:32, so I was bleeding 10-15 seconds per mile with the headwind. The splits were something like 5:18, 5:25 (totally lost focus!), 5:11, 5:14. I was very content to just average marathon pace on the way back. Finished in 48:04 (Average pace = 5:09/mile). As far as I can tell from looking at old results, the course record was 48:37, so I came in 33 seconds under that time, in less than ideal conditions. Last year at this race I ran 50:29 and was thrilled with that time... its cool how the spectrum of what I think is "fast" has shifted so much in the past year. A good effort this morning - I'm happy with how it felt, and putting it into context of the accumulated workouts and volume of training, its another indicator that everything is moving in the right direction. The 15K in Arizona on March 11th is going to be a great test for me. Considering the competition I'll be facing there, I'm thinking I can run 2+ minutes faster than today. Good running today by the rest of the guys - Fritz ran low 50s, Walter had a really good season debut (in his crayola shoes!), and Rob ran another strong race. Warmed up 2 miles w/ Rob and Walter... then cooled down 6+ miles with a big group - Andrea, Fritz, Kevin, Bill, Walter, and then we found Josse and added on a bit more. Nice to meet JD and Tina after the race as well. Tomorrow (Sunday) we'll meet at Highland High @ 7:30am for an easy group run around Sugar House. 
PM - An easy 3 mile shakeout run. Does more for getting the kinks out than an hour of stretching would ever do for me :-) Got the grill fired back up for dinner - I think we put it away for all of 2 months.
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