Warmup 1.78 miles Race Mile 1 5:42 Mile 2 5:37 Mile 3 6:00 Mile 4 5:42 5K Split 17:44 (17:58 at Coopers Run 5K 3 weeks ago) Avg HR 157 Peak HR 186 186 is the highest peak HR recorded since Race For Red 5K on May 21 2011. The HR graph has a nice gradual climb throughout the race. I passed the lactate acid Threshold HR of 173 at the 4 min mark. Speaking with Chad (from the blog) before the race I mentioned that I would like to run this race at 5:50 mile pace. I based this time off my last 5K race time converted to a 4 mile race. A short way into the race I looked at my Garmin and noticed we were running 5:09 pace, and we were a few seconds off the lead group! I don’t care what race it is, if you are running 5 min/mile pace I have no problem letting you go. Thankfully this pace was mostly a ruse. This pace was driven by some very excited high school runners. The pace slowed as we leveled out from the first down hill part of the course, but I still had a hard time chasing down the front pack. None the less I was able to pass several runners over the next few miles. I was running 4th with about 3/4 mile to go when I caught up to the 3rd pace runner. When I passed him he put up a fight for a while then reluctantly settled in behind me. Entering the last 400m of the race I had about a 1 second lead on 4th. As we rounded the last turn on the track the kid pass me like he was hitting the afterburner button. It was like a Wile Coyote cartoon. I simply did not have the speed to fend him off. Not only that, he beat me by a few second in the last 150m. Ouch. Come to find out the kid specializes in the 1600m, and he is half my age. So all said and done I am very happy with 4th. My Garmin claims that I ran 4.04 miles in 23:00 and my 4 mile time would be 22:47. This puts my average pace at 5:41, nine seconds faster than my goal. I am very happy about that. Looking at the splits they appear a little erratic, but that is mostly caused by the hilly course. I really don’t think that I have improved 9 seconds per mile since my last race 3 weeks ago. I think this race shows that I have not been digging down to the bottom of my tank in my last races. I think that I need to add a greater degree of wall busting, gut wrenching toughness to my workout program. Perhaps then I will be better adept at emptying my tank on race day. | 