Fly me to the moon...

I ran in the morning with Sasha and Jeff.  I didn't bother to time it because we stopped so many times setting up the course for the race and shoveling snow and ice under the 820 N bridge.  We set up the 5K turnaround point and then I headed home while Jeff and Sasha set up the rest of the marks for the 10K.

I had a quick breakfast, relaxed a little and then headed over to the race.  I ran over the Exchange park for a warmup.  There was a fairly good turnout for a January race in the snow with the temps in the single digits.  We all started at once next to the firestation.  My plan was to push it hard on the dry spots and slow down for the snow and ice along the trail.  I didn't get a good start and got behind some slower runners, but I got around them about 50 meters into the race and took off.  I caught up to Sasha, Jeff, and Nick, but they were going pretty fast and there was no way I was staying with them.  We hit our first icy patch, and I fell back a ways.  They hit the first mile in 5:06 while my first mile was 5:48.  The first mile included the tunnel under the 820 N bridge that we had worked on in the morning, and the thought was that it would be the worst place.  It wasn't even close.  The second mile was almost all on ice or snow with a couple of water jumps under the train bridges and a skating rink leading up to and under the I-15 bridge.  My second mile including the turnaround and all the icy fun was 6:52.  I had to stop and walk or shuffle/slide a few times.  I picked it up the third mile on the dry spots and ended up with a 6:12.  I had around 31s for the last 0.1 and finished with a time of 19:24 (6:15/mile).  I thought it was pretty good considering the conditions.  I probably could have gone faster, but I wasn't going to catch Jeff who finish almost 3 minutes ahead of me, and the next guy came in around 26:00.  I was safely in 2nd place and didn't feel the need to kill myself.  I was impressed with Jeff's time in the 5K and Nick's time (33:18) in the 10K considering the conditions.  I ran a little bit of cooldown, helped cleanup some and headed home.