**** Update: They finally posted the race results. Looks like I got 1st in AD and 1st overall Master's. Woo hoo! Also Kim got 2nd in her AD and overall Master's and 206 out of 1526 overall including the men. Nice!
Been going non-stop since the race - just finally getting a chance to make the report. Not sure on my actual time or place since we had to leave quick after the race and they haven't posted anything online yet. I was a little slow turning off my watch at the end of the race so chip time might be a little quicker.
Ok so whoever the BYU math whiz was that measured the race distances must have been smoking something banned by the honor code. Either that or maybe some over-zealous sunday school teacher trying to teach a point..... perhaps making the 10K only 9K had something to do with us paying our race tithes of 10% of the race distance. And maybe the 3.28 mile 5K was teaching us we should go the extra .18 mile. Anyways the race handling was a mess but at least the money went to a good cause.
So as far as my race: I felt like it was an OK race for me. Time adjusted to last years course which I had measured at 6.10 miles I ran it nearly identically, so probably worth around a 40:20-40:40 on the old course.
At the start I didn't see hardly any runners that looked Master's AD age except for Lawrence Mancuzzo who just happened to be last year's 45-49 winner. I just beat him last year (I was 44) during the last mile as he did what many runners do on this course and go out too fast on the 1st uphill mile then die the last mile or 2. Knowing this I decided not to worry about catching him until the last 1/2 of the race. Turns out he must not be in as good of shape this year as I passed him shortly after mile 1 and never saw any sign of him again.
Mile splits/ave-HR and commentary:
1 - 6:57/174 Starting line moved back a bit so not quite as much uphill as last year. As expected lots of runner go out to fast and leaving me in the dust for now. I pass Mancuzzo at the end of this mile.
2 - 6:22/184 First .25 is uphill then it's roller coaster time as we get the fun downhill. Time to just relax and let gravity do it's thing. I just love running downhill and now it's my turn to start passing all those young coeds who went too fast up the hill. Mile markers are bogus and meaningless.
3 - 6:03/185 Yee-haw!! Loving that downhill running, passed a few more runners. Downhill ends at the end of this mile.
4 - 6:38/187 Flat to slight uphill mile. Mostly running alone now and missing the downhill. Start to lose focus on this mile. Also I see now my HR was approaching190. Whenever this happens in a race it means I'll be in trouble in the next 1-2 miles. Good thing that's all I have left to go.
5 - 6:54/188 Lazy mile for me. This is when the serious pain starts in a 10K(9K in this case) and I lose interest in racing and start slacking for a while. Also confused with the messed up mile markers, not sure if there is going to be some surprise addition the last mile to make the race get to 10K or if it's going to be short. Only one runner passed me the whole race and it was during this mile (#4 or 5 woman??). I did close the gap near the end but couldn't ever catch her.
5-5.6 - 3:51(6:39 pace)/190 We merge in with the 5K runners. This is good and bad. Good because the extra crowd snaps me out of my stupor. Bad because the 5K runners are going slower pace so lots of weaving thru runners. I'm really hurting and actually quite happy that the race is going to be short. I'm able to drop the pace closer to goal and push to the finish.
Overall average pace/HR: 6:35/184
Kim had what I think is a possible PR 5K race finishing in somewhere in the 24:00-24:20 range. Of course we don't know for sure because the 5K was .18 miles long so her official time is 25:30. Check out her report for more details.
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