The Dart Challenge is a fundraiser for the Davis XC team. Flat lollipop course, competitive... I'd highly recommend it. Corbin Talley does a great job putting this together, and its an excellent tune-up for the TOU 1/2. I am not happy with how I ran today. Felt really flat on my warmup, and let that get to me mentally. For whatever reason, I didn't have that killer instinct today beforehand, and it never kicked in once the race began. The lack of effort is a little embarrassing. John Coyle (who beat me by ~20 seconds at the Des 10K) took it out pretty quick. He was about 4:37 at the mile and I was a little behind (4:42, right where I wanted to be). The second mile is where I really tanked (4:58). I don't even know what to say about that. So I was through 2 miles in 9:40, which is still very much on pace to break 15 minutes, but mentally I just wasn't engaged. I should have been on the attack going after John (who was probably 50 meters ahead of me at that point). At around 2.5 miles there are two quick right hand turns (see map below, red circle). John overshot the second turn and kept going straight on Flint Meadow Dr. This was not surprising to me because I did the same thing while warming up on the course (there were arrows and it was well-marked, so not the race's fault by any means). Anways, I called out to John and he kept going. So I called out again and then he realized what was going on and doubled back. I had quite a gap on him now, but there's no glory is winning a race because a (better) competitor misses a turn, so I slowed down to a jog until he caught back up to me, and then we ran to the finish together, just sort of tempo-running it in, with the agreement that John would win (he had a gap on me and it was only fair that way). The third mile was 5:00 and we both finished in 15:08. John would have been well under 15 minutes had he stayed on course. There are silver linings you can pick out of this (I ran 15:23 the week before running 1:05:40 at TOU 1/2 two years ago, we didn't really race the last half-mile, etc) but nothing makes up for the fact that I had a poor mental attitude today and my performance reflected it. Maybe I would have been around 15 flat if things had gone differently in the last mile, but honestly I was thinking more along the lines of 14:45 today. And I was in position to do that through the first mile, and just gave up. That's what disappoints me. I didn't really have time to get mad at myself after the race, though, because two minutes after I finished, Allie came rolling in, running a 30 second PR and SMASHING 18 minutes for the first time! I'm really happy for her - she's been after that benchmark for a long time, and seeing her beat it by that much was really great. Congrats, Allie. I'm leaving in an hour for North Carolina... spending the week at the beach with my family. Going to use this as motivation to redeem myself at TOU 1/2 next weekend. I fly back and get in just in time to get up to Logan next Friday night. 
AM - 9 miles (course warmup w/ half mile at MP + strides, race, cooldown on the course w/ Allie, James, and Collin). PM - Off.
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