45F, N 11 mph. Great race for me. The wind that I was scared of was not too bad, really light for this time of year. My stretch goal was to break 1:25 and I actually did it this time.
It was about a 2-hour drive to Wichita Falls, so got up early to make the drive. Did about a mile to warm up, then lined up at the front since there were only about a hundred participants.
Miles 1-5 - 6:29, 6:28, 6:30, 6:32, 6:20. The race was mostly flat and had a lot of crosswind which was great. Mile 1, however, was downhill and downwind, which meant mile 13 would suck. I took it easy and was in 5th after mile 1. After that I was feeling good, so I held on to a 6:30-ish pace and moved into the lead after mile 3. This was actually kind of a nice, scenic course around Lake Wichita. I was just following the golf cart guy and enjoying my lead.
Miles 6-10 - 6:35, 6:18, 6:20, 6:31, 6:28. Got to the turnaround just a bit early, and I guessed that the course would be short, but we ended up taking a slightly modified route back. After the turnaround, I got to get a look at my lead. Not huge, maybe 20 seconds. The guy in second said, "You're killing me!" as we passed each other. Uh huh. Well, he was a little too close for comfort so I did a little surge for about 10 minutes through miles 7 and 8, running 6:15-6:20 pace to make sure he was dropped. I think it worked. Miles 9 and 10 had really slippery gravel (this was the modified return) and I spend half the time running on the grass since the footing sucked.
Miles 11-13 - 6:25, 6:16, 6:38. Finally around the 10.5 mark, there was a turn back on to asphault right after an aid station. Right after I hit the street, I heard cheers for the 2nd place guy, who I thought was long gone. He was close. Hello motivation. I turned on the jets and ran my fastest mile in mile 12. That would be the mile he passed me. Not gradually either, there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I just said "great push," and let him go. The last mile was as brutal as I thought it would be, uphill and into the strongest wind of the morning, it seemed. I ended up losing by about 25 seconds but what could I do? Turns out it was that guy's first HM, so he was probably a lot faster than me but just ran conservatively at the beginning since he'd never raced one.
I measured it at 13.00 miles, the winner measured it at 13.05. AP was 6:27 by my garmin, and the course was not certified. If you do the math, I would have run 1:24:31 for 13.11, so we'll call that the new PR.
I'm pretty pumped, this is better than I thought I could do. I've had pretty much no good workouts since Houston, and 6:30 pace has felt terribly hard until just now. I think this race is probably better than my 3:01 in Houston. Definitely think I'm on my way to sub-3... | 
