A.M. Top of Utah Half - 1:14:49, 12th overall, 2nd master, $75.
Stayed with Steve Anderson the night before.
Warmed up a little over 2 with Jake. At the start there were a lot fast runners - money went 5 deep and there were two people that broke 1:10 and went home empty-handed. Fortunately the race had a charity fund for the senior citizens of which I ended up a beneficiary along with Walter and Rob Murphy.
My goal was to go under 1:14. I thought a performance similar to what I ran in the Provo River Half would be sufficient. So either I ran worse, or the course is not quite as fast as I thought it was. In any case, report mile by mile to the best of my memory:
1 - 5:31 - ended up alone a little ahead of Ben VanBeekum and Jon Heslup but quite a bit behind Walter who opened in around 5:08. In retrospect, I should have just sat behind Ben and Jon and saved energy.
2 - 5:31 (11:02) - Ben and Jon caught up to me and I got on their tail. Walter had 10:42.
3 - 5:40 (16:42) - Ben and Jon pulled ahead, I felt the pace was too fast for me. They did 5:27, Walter was 16:11 at 3 miles - 5:29.
4 - 5:44 (22:26) - Ben, Jon, and Walter gapped me by a little more.
5 - 5:27 (27:53) - here comes the famous Blacksmith Fork Canyon tailwind. Around this time Ben passed Walter, so I ran most of the remainder of the race watching Walter and Jon from behind.
6 - 5:30 (33:23) - more of that tailwind
7 - 5:30 (38:53) - tailwind helps keep the momentum
8 - 5:43 (44:36) - end of tailwind, fatigue, lack of serious traning and possibly old age are beginning to show
9 - 5:45 (50:21) - hanging on
10 - 5:52 (56:13) - not good, but at least sub-6:00
12 - 12:33 for 2 uphill miles (1:08:36) - oops - there goes sub-1:14, now sub-1:15 is in jeoprady. How did this happen? Maybe missing the split at 11 was part of the problem. I was not feeling great, but was not feeling too bad either. Could have pushed this a little harder maybe. Or maybe not, who knows.
13 - 1:14:18 (5:42) - Saw Walter coming to me, but he was too far ahead to catch. I tried, though.
last 0.1 - 31 seconds
Walter finished 36 seconds ahead, which was less than ideal - in the ideal world that number would be negative. However, I did have concerns around mile 10 that the gap might be as bad as over a full minute which did not materialize.
Riley won in a breakthrough race with 1:05:16. Jake was a close second with 1:05:38. Then John Coyle with 1:06:10 - I talked to him afterwards, he said he lost some time on a VPB. Then Bryant Jensen 1:06:55, Jason Holt 1:09:05, Scott Keate 1:09:22, Jacob Howell 1:09:55, Ben VanBeekum 1:10:58, Jesse Dunn 1:12:57, John Heslop 1:13:12, and Walter 1:14:13.
Ran a cooldown to make the total 20 miles running back on the course. Headed back on the course, experienced a bathroom emergency. Saw some people outside of their house, asked them to use their restroom. Afterwards made it to mile marker 11 and a little past going the other way, then ran back. By then I was with people headed maybe for 2:07-2:08. Nobody wanted to run with me until I had passed the 2:05 pacer. For some reason they had a hard time believing that a) they could run faster at least for a little bit and b) I would slow down to the best they could do. In the last half mile I found some people to pace.
During the race my legs felt strong but not quick. 5:30 was about my limit and that required fresh legs and nice downhill. I need to do something to fix it. Probably tempo runs down the canyon - I have not been doing those lately.
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