Picked Jon and Cody up and drove to the start. We warmed up for a mile and messed around for a while. Then we ran into Logan Fielding and ran another 1/2 mile with him. Jon and Cody had never met Logan before. By the way registration looked we would never get the race started, but they ended up turning about 100 people away so that we could finally start.
I knew there were some fast runners there today, Carson Campbell, his brother Tod, all the the State Campion Mountain Crest cross country team, Logan, The guy that beat me at TOU half last year, and others who looked good. I didn't worry about place, I just wanted to see where I was at in my training at this point. Here are my splits:
Mile 1: 5:34- Started off with Logan and a pack of about eight others. I felt pretty good.
Mile 2: 5:40- Still running with Logan and feeling good. The High schoolers were still hanging around and getting annoying!
Mile 3: 5:46- Logan and Neal Ferrin pulled up a few seconds, and I was starting to feel tight. Frustrating, because I should feel good still!
Mile 4: 5:44- Still really tight, and I see Logan, Neal, and Kevin Dickey slowly creeping away from me.
Mile 5: 5:38- Tod Campbell comes up on me and I start to relax again.
Mile 6: 5:33- Still running with Tod, Logan and Neal aren't too far ahead and not gaining too much. Kevin Dickey starts coming back to me.
Mile 7: 5:51 Tod falls back a bit and I see Logan and Neal double the distance on me in the stretch before the hill. Took a little water at the top of the hill and hoped to catch Kevin. The hill didn't really help or hurt me.
Mile 8: 5:51- This was a bad mile for me but I felt fine. I thought that I had picked up the pace, when in reality I had slowed up. Kevin Dickey sees me coming and puts some good distance between us. Logan was flying and I never saw him or Neal again really.
Mile 9: Feel relaxed and wishing I would have felt this good the whole race. Start to close on Kevin Dickey. But still not super motivated, because of some bad miles and the big gaps in front of me.
Mile 9.3: 1:40- Kevin Dickey is slowly coming back to me and I just don't care anymore because the finish line is right there. Kevin ended up 4 seconds ahead of me, I should have caught him instead of wuss around in cruise control. I felt was better at the end than I did anywhere else. Ended up with 52:48 for my finish time.
I thought that Carson had run away from everyone but it turns out he fell apart and took 4th. I think he was in the lead for the first 7 miles. Logan ended up really flying in, and pulled away big time in the last 3.3 to take 2nd overall. Jon and Cody weren't too far behind me and did good too. Josh Steffen came in 1st place.
I was OKAY with my time. I had said that I wanted to run 52 minutes, and averaged 5:39 miles instead of 5:35 miles, so not too far off. My time today would have won just about every Freedom Run in the last 10 years, but was only good enough for 6th today. I was glad that there was a good bunch of front runners to compete against. I am not quite sure why I felt so tight in the middle of the race, those were my slowest miles and should have been my fastest, acccording to the course. I'll take this race today though, and I guess it is even a PR for the distance, because I have only done two other 15Ks and they weren't that fast. There was a very competitive field and everyone ran well. Good race overall, but I need to work on my shorter race mental game. I can not think like I am always in a marathon and that I can dink around and people will still come back to me. I need to hit the speed work before I go do any 5K or 10Ks, and get out of my marathon mentality for these shorter races.
I cooled down with Jon, Cody, and Logan for about 2.5 miles on the course, and had a big July 4th Chuck Wagon Breakfast after the awards.
(Fastwitch -23 miles) | 