I set my alarm for 2:30 because the buses started loading at 3:30. I had thought quite a bit about my "bonk" the last 3 miles of Ogden 3 weeks ago. I attributed it to poor fueling the morning of the race. I overate the night before and still felt full in the morning so I ate nothing except a gel 15 minutes before the start and 4 more during as I normally do. Today I ate a serving of Rockit Fuel at 3:00am and I think it made the difference in the last miles. When the race started I was on the side road towards the clothing truck so I had to work quite a bit the first mile through the crowd just to get going. I ran a 7:43 first mile and it really aggravated me. I ran the next 2 miles in 6:46 and 6:45 (which is too fast) before I dialed in a reasonable 7:10-7:15 pace out to the highway at mile 8. When we hit the first uphill around Deer Creek reservoir I began to struggle. I still have issues with my bone spur on uphills so I have to back WAY off or I am in trouble. So I struggled on the couple of rolling miles around the lake. When we hit some better downhill after 10 I did better, but I couldn't get back to my 7:15 again. I basically struggled to get to the 1/2 in 1:35:36. I was a bit behind where I wanted to be but I didn't panic. I knew we had one more climb before 16 so I wanted to stay loose and just see what I could do after the last uphill. After 16 I settled back in to a 7:20ish pace and started to feel better. When the course flattened out after 20 I started feeling stronger (just like last year). I calculated that I was on a 3:16-3:17 finish track. I told myself I would be OK with that, as I secretly told myself that I WASN'T OK with that. Please don't ask me how I can keep a secret from myself but when you have been running for 20 miles it is possible. I picked up the pace and finished the last 6 miles REALLY strong! I passed dozens of other runners and made up 2 minutes in those miles. I finished just over 3:14 and finally got an age-group award again. It has been almost 2 years since I did that. Coincidentally (or not), 2 years ago is when I started having the bone spur issue. I talked to lots of other bloggers after the race and many people had awesome days out there! GREAT JOB EVERYONE!!!
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