What A beautiful day in St. George! This was a very positive race for me. My goal was to hit 1:37:00. I went out just a little fast the first mile but kept the effort minimal. Really I was only 20 seconds fast. I held on well on the downhill and the breathing was great. Up the West Canyon portion wasn't too bad but did take some out of me. I held exactly as I had planned on that section. Coming down I held pretty good and just did not want to stop. At mile 10 my left foot started to hurt. Just kept pushing but did stop as we went under the Snow Canyon parkway. I pulled the shoe off and slopped some Wintercrest under my foot on the sock then took off. Probably lost about45 seconds to a minute. That was a great investment of time. That took the pain totally away! I pushed hard through Entrada not wanting to have a repeat of last year on that section. I held it and just kept pushing. I really did not look at my time until I crossed the finish line and I was pumped...1:35 Splits: 5:56/ 6:12/ 7:01/ 7:57/ 8:04/ 7:10/ 7:48/ 7:13/ 7:24/ 7:38/ 8:19(fix foot) 7:17/ 7:11/ 6:51 Average pace 7:19 PS I missed my HobbleCreek PR by 23 seconds and this is a much more difficult course. RACE COMMENTS: Not sure if I liked the split format with the women starting 45 minutes early. By the time they got to the awards almost everyone was gone. It took away some of the competitivness, you never really knew who you were racing against. When you went across the finish line there were no finisher medals. Then finally they said go over by the food table to get them...poor. It took over a hour and a half to post any results for the men because a lot of men ran the earlier start time and that messed everything up. The clothing retreval was a bunch of bags lined up in no order, everyone complaining about that. At least the race started on time, loved the chip timing.
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