I met up with Walter, Jon, and James before the race and did a two mile warm up with them. It was fun to run with them during the warm up because I knew I would not be able to keep up with them during the race. The race course follow the same course as the 10k three weeks ago for the first 5.5 miles. We had the same nasty hill starting at mile 4.5. When I started up the hill my time was better than my time on the 10k. At mile 5.5 instead of turning dowhill towards the parking like in the 10k, we turned uphill and continued to climb. When I crossed the 10k marking in the race my time was 45:57, only 7 seconds slower than my 10k time with a bigger hill. I still felt great at this point so I pushed up the hill. The top of the hill was at mile 7. Mile 7 to 8 was a nice downhill. I knew I had to make up some time so I flew down the hill. My mile split was 5:50. The next mile was great as well but not quite as fast. At mile 9 the course turned back uphill for a quarter mile. It was a tough hill at that point in the race. I got passed on the hill, but caught and passed the guy back when it leveled off. I finished strong and came in with a time of 1:12:28. This is a PR for me, because in all of the races I have run, I have never raced this distance. My split time ended up being 7:14. I am also moving up in the overall race standings. The longer runs are my strong point. After the race I did a 4 mile cool down with Jon, Walter, and James. Then in the late afternoon, I ran 4.33 more miles with my wife and brother in law, putting me over 20 miles for the day. Whew!!
| 