Had a delightful run today. Perfect weather and the SF canyon wind was being well behaved. Certainly not what I would call a race effort as I felt pretty good (too good?) the whole way. I would have been more aggresive but I've been nursing a sore hamstring that seems to give me much grief if I go much faster than marathon pace. So I pretty much got into MP tempo run mode and ran the whole race at that effort hoping to at least break 1:30. Toward the end (last 3 miles) I was feeling better than I should in a race and I thought perhaps I should work harder. However whenever I sped up my hamstring would start to yell at me so I just enjoyed the more relaxed pace and did just enough to keep Paul T from catching me :)) Paul actually ran a great race and seems to be improving with every race. He is definitely now in the sub-3 SGM camp. Kim also had a great race but I'll refrain from providing any details and let her describe her run in her race report. Warmed up a mile with Paul T then about another mile or so with Sasha. I was surprised to see him there I didn't think Sasha was running this race. He ended up winning it, so big congrats to him. There were a few other bloggers there as well and I think most everyone had pretty good races, I won't try to name everyone as I'm sure I'll miss somebody. At the starting line I see that AG placing is out the door as I see the regulars... Darin C and Carl H there, but also new-master and super-speedster Ron Greenwood. These 3 are among the best in the state in 40-44 so there was no chance for top 3. Oh well we just do our best. Kind of sad when I can get 12th overall but still only 4th in AG. But since my long-term goal is to be top 5 AG at most races, I'm still good in that regard. I could have had the race in my life today and still been 4th as there were over 7 minutes between me and the slowest of these guys.
Splits: 1 - 6:48 2 - 6:59 (not sure what happened here, got lazy I guess)
3 - 6:49 4 - 6:52 (small hill)
5 - 6:44 6 - 7:09 (hill at the end) 7 - 7:06 (more uphill) 8 - 6:27 (downhill, experimented with running 6:00 pace for a bit but the hamstring wasn't happy about that) 9 - 6:49 10 - 6:41 11 - 6:47 12 - 6:48 13 - 6:43 .1 - :38 (6:30 pace) Of course I would have liked to run closer to 1:25 today but I did get under 1:30 and it felt pretty easy. I think barring injury troubles or just a really horrible day, I believe I am on track for sub-3 at SGM. Maybe even closer to 2:50 if everything really comes together. 4 weeks to go I can't wait.
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