What ever it takes!

I'll do a more detailed report later, just wanted to give a quick update.  Pretty good day, I have had a side ache the last 2 days which I was worried would act up today but I held up pretty well.  My legs felt amazingly well after another almost 85 mile week so I felt good going in.  There was a lot of confusion at the start line this morning so I just hung out with Sasha figuring the race wouldn't start without him :).  We got started about 10 minutes late which was amazing it started that close to on time considering how confused everyone was.

I did about 2 miles of warm up in the hour and a half I had to wait, just ran up and down the canyon a few times and up the hill for bathroom breaks a few times.

My plan was to just go for it from the start, I figured I do 13 miles everyday so worse case if I blew up I could just slow down to a normal run pace and still finish good.  I did start out very fast for me, but felt good and kept the pace up through the entire canyon to Vivian park, slowed down a bit there and then going back up the canyon was really slow, partially on purpose mostly because of the wind.  At the turn around I picked it back up which I was glad I could do, I was afraid the slow pace going up would cause me to slow down.

Coming back down the canyon it started to get uncomfortably hot, I was hoping to hit the 10 mile marker in under 1 hour, but I hit it at exactly 1 and knew I didn't have an 18 minute 5 K left in me.  I pushed as hard as I could for the last 5K but frankly was pretty shot, I think because of the heat. I don't run in the heat enough.  Actually managed a sprint finish trying to catch the guy in front of me, but I didn't take off soon enough.  He probably got me by about 5 seconds.   Anyway, 10th place overall (again)  my wife thinks I'm in a 10th place rut.  Not a bad rut all things considered.  My Garmin said 1:19:00, the timer was off at the finish so I don't know official time yet.

Splits went like this

Mile 1-  5:34.66  Most likely my fastest mile split ever. 

Mile 2-  5:48.86

Mile 3-  5:57.62

Mile 4-  5:42.17

Mile 5-  6:07.42

Mile 6-  5:59.74

Mile 7-  6:24.96  Not as bad as I thought going up the hill.  I guessed 7:00

Mile 8-  6:25.51

Mile 9-  5:57.18

Mile 10- 6:00.91

Mile 11- 6:05.78

Mile 12- 6:09.29

Mile 13- 6:13.75

Last 0.1- 1:19.04  Garmin says I hit 4:40 pace on final sprint, I felt fast :)

Total time according to Garmin 1:19:04

Side note:  I ran this race last year as someone else in 1:40:??  at the time I thought I totally rocked it.  So I figure all I have to do is improve my time by 21 minutes for next year and I'll break 1 hour.  :)

 http://connect.garmin.com/activity/43808217