It started as a nice weather day today.....it did not stay that way. It was 40 degrees with almost no breeze when I left the house. I ran to Barry Smith's house and we ran together to the start of the 10K. I ran 4.10 miles to the start averaging around 7:30/mile, just nice and easy. The weather for the 10K was perfect. We started at 8:00am. They changed the course this year so it is actually a true 10K. In past years it has been short (like 5.88). The problem was the 10K runners started with a loop around Raymond Park and the 5K runners/walkers went directly South. So, as you may have guessed, before we hit the first mile marker we were running through a sea of 5K walkers, strollers, little kids on bikes, you name it. The 5K and 10K courses were together from mile .3 until mile 3 for the 10Kers. Barry and I ran together to pace each other today as a speed workout to prepare for Ogden in 2 weeks. Barry's only goal today was to beat me. We were about 1 minute behind the leaders at mile 3 when we had some uphills and winding trails so our pace slowed a bit. When we got to the top of our climb and flattened-out I was worried that we would not break 40 minutes as we were behind schedule. During mile 5 Barry pushed the pace and actually made a move to try and gap me with 1.5 miles left to go. I hung on and stayed about 10 feet behind him as we pushed on. I caught him at 5.7 and we were both pushing pretty good. I asked him if we were running in together and he gave me that "I'm going to beat you" look. We saw the finish line with .2 to go and we both just went all-out. We sprinted (well, as fast as 2 guys in their mid-40's can sprint) to the finish and we both crossed at the exact same time. Our pace the last .2 miles was 4:23!!! His foot with the timing chip must have been his front foot and mine must have been my back foot because the official results had him 2/100's of a second ahead of me. So he got his goal and beat me......NICE JOB!!! It was a PR for both of us. Here are the splits: 1. 6:13 2. 6:19 3. 6:45 (some uphill) 4. 6:47 (more hills) 5. 6:19 6. 6:10 .2 4:23 So he finished 3rd overall and I was 4th. The 1st overall was in our age group and the 2nd overall was in the 50's age group so today OLD GUYS RULE!!! I had about 35 minutes until the awards so I went for a cool-down run of 4.27 miles in a 7:28 average. It was during this time that it started to rain and I got pretty wet. During the awards I stood under the park shelter with everyone else but got a pretty good chill. My plan was to run home after the awards but it started raining really hard and I was not dressed for it so I caught a ride home. I try to do another 8 or so tonight if the weather clears up.
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