I had a big family party down in Mona today with everyone there. That doesn't happen too often when you come from a family of 9 kids. I had hoped on a few more miles but what I got ended up being fine. We went down to Nephi early, kind of a last minute thing, so I could run the race. I was hoping that I would have some competition to chase, and secretly hoped that I could hang on and win. My wish came true when I got to the start and saw the local cross country kids and some other decent guys in their 20s. Last year I won easily, but this year I would have to work harder for a win. At the gun everyone took off as suspected and I hung back. The lead pack jumped out quick and pulled ahead of me by about 60 meters. I wasn't worried though because they took off fairly fast into a slight grade and good canyon headwind, and stayed the same distance ahead. I decided that I would play follow the leader for a while instead of me being the leader. Part of that was because I didn't feel super spring in my legs, and the other part is my confidence isn't at an all time high right now with my little aches and pains and hardly any racing this year. I stayed back in about 6th place for the first mile, which was 5:53 for me, not bad for that mile. After the mile the lead five began to break up a bit and I saw a couple of guys start to make a move. I didn't make any move myself, just hung the same pace as the leaders, but I picked off two straggler high schoolers in the process. Adam Bracken started to pull away from two high schoolers at about a mile and a half and I follow as before. When we passed the water stop just before two miles I was in a strong second with only Bracken to catch (5:44). He was about 70 meters ahead and I decided to pick it up and win this thing. I stayed calm and continued to slowly close to gap in the next half mile or so. I did have one thought that maybe he could really out kick me if I caught him, but pushed it out quickly and made my move with less that a half mile to go. I caught him on the inside and surged ahead, he tried to come with me and stuck right on my shoulder for the next 200 meters. I used to not worry about people and their kicks a back in the day because I could usually out kick about everyone, but that is not the case any more. When we made the turn east going uphill off of main I decided it was time to put this race away so I wouldn't have to kick it out, and that is what I did. I pushed hard in the next 2 blocks and dropped him on the uphill so that on the final block I could just cruise in, and it worked. Bracken came in about 15 seconds behind me, and some of the high schoolers were as much as a minute back in the end. My third mile was 5:20, and total time was 17:40, a couple of seconds ahead of last years finish. I was glad that the competition was better and that I could run a smart race. I defended my title well and put another trophy on the shelf. Cooled down for a mile with after the race with Bracken, nice guy, although I could tell that he was bummed about being caught in the last 600 meters of a race. I fully intended to run more miles but never got out with all of the family stuff going on. (2130- 123 miles) (Fastwitch -92 miles) | 