Today was the annual first dam run. It is usually a very popular race but this year there was a noticeable lower turnout for the race. This could have been do to the recent colder temperatures or the construction occuring around the site. I signed up for this race on the spur of the moment and made the trip back up to logan for the night before.
The morining of the race was very cold and I decided to wear my tights for the race along with a long sleve shirt on top of my running shirt. There were a lot of familiar faces at the race and I had a great time catching up with people. This was also the first year I did not do the 10K at this race and chickend out of it due to my recent lack of fitness. I did not warm up for the race. I decided to be very passive on the start since there were a lot of high school kids in the race who I knew would want to start with Conner, starting out too fast. There were two packs and I was at the back of the second at the start. I stayed there for about 600 meters until I got motivated to just go faster. I picked up my pace but not substanially, just enough to slowly start passing people. After passing most of the eager beavers, I was at a gap between me and three other runners. The gap was probably around 200 meters. I worked to close the gap wihtout changing my pace but I was just slightly going faster than they were. I caught them with about 700 meters to go and one of them reacted with a surge of their own. I took the surge head on and he faltered first. I earned myself a little gap on the for my efforts but I ran out of gas the last 100 meters and almost got passed by one of them. I was happy for my time and the effort I put into it, besideds eating a couple doughnuts for breakfast and not warming up and starting too slow. I did end up cooling down and in the process got my shoes a little dirty while running through a canal. I won my age group (only one other person was in it) and I called it a morning. I didn't do anything later and overall I was satisfied and surprised with my result. I hope to start getting more mileage in soon.
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