I flew to Salt Lake City on Friday with a few friends from high school. Our trip was to go to the University of Utah/University of Washington game Saturday afternoon. I also wanted to visit a few old friends in Utah on the weekend trip, so I asked Paul if he wanted to meet up for a run. He didn't, but he told me about the little OctoberFast 5k that he was going to be in SLC to help out with. I haven't been training to race, but it was a sunny morning and I was on vacation. So why not? We showed up a little later than planned and walked onto the Highland High track at five minutes to nine or so. Jake and Andrea seemed willing to allow a late entry, so I jogged about 200 meters with a few strides, lined up and we were off. I had zero plan going into this, so I just ran a comfortable first lap to see where I could be, then decided to hold the pace. I was around 85 seconds for the first two, but backed off to between 88 and 91 for all of the other laps. Jake and the other leaders moved out pretty quickly, but I ran with another guy for the 6 laps or so then was solo for the second half and just focused on sticking the pace. That felt really comfortable, which is fine because I wasn't sure how the last mile would have felt had I pushed more. (I don't always trust the altitude response, so I was cautious.)
Ended up with an 18:30 and a smile on my face. Most importantly, Paul had donuts in the car waiting. Cooled down two more laps, then we went up the canyon for breakfast.
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