Finished short of my PR but still a good race. More later.
Let me just start off by saying DANGIT! I am such a wimp! I missed third place in my age group by 12 seconds. The guys were right in front of me. It's sad that I go back and kick myself for not passing those last two guys, I should have just sucked it up, passed them, and won the prize.....oh well, whatcha gunna do.
Drove up to St. George Friday evening and stayed at my parents house. Got a great nights sleep and felt really good in the morning. The weather for this race turned out to be almost perfect. The rain never came but it was overcast the entire way. The temperature was perfect. The only bad part was the headwind we faced for several miles.
The course was a bit tougher than I had remembered with approxamately 3 miles worth of some pretty good hills. There are a couple of miles with really fast down hill running but it just wasn't enough to make up for the headwind and the uphill parts. Here are the splits, see if you can tell where the hills are: 7:18, 7:05, 7:17, 7:34, 7:26, 7:39, 7:45, 7:05, 6:37, 6:46, 7:38, 8:08, 7:11, :40. In case any of you are adding the time, the splits don't equal the total race time. My Garmin said 12.95 when I finished, so I finished the final .15 around the track at the high school. Talk about OCD! Miles 4-6 are a pretty steady climb, you jump off a cliff for a couple miles after that, you climb some more for miles 11 and 12 and then 13 is a flat foot race to the finish.
I ran with my same friend that I ran with from the Painter's half marathon and another one of his friends, Don Vines. We stayed together for a while then we dropped my first friend who just didn't have it today and then his friend dropped me on the down hill section and never looked back. He ended up beating me by about 2 minutes.
I had a hard time fighting off the demon's during miles 11 and 12. My legs had just been turned to mush on the cliff and I just couldn't seem to get into a good rhythm. It didn't help that we went from steep down hill to steady uphill, but I still should have been able to run some quicker miles. I finally found a good rythm at about mile 12 when it flattened out and I knew I only had a mile to go. I knew there were people behind me not to far back cause we had changed positions a few times in the race, but I didn't even look back, I just put my head down and gave it everything else I had in the tank. I was pretty well gassed at the end of this run and don't know that I could have run it any better. That's a good feeling.
In case you were wondering, I did sing "Rock You Like a Hurricane" several times during this race. Thanks for reminding me Teena. I wish I would have had the real version of the song for the last 5K of this race.
Overall I am pleased with the race and my time. It is a course PR for me by 11 minutes from the race I did in 2007 and finished with Meg. Meg walked the 5K today and finished dead last. She could have easily walked faster and finished higher but she chose to hang back with some older ladies who needed her encouragement to get to the finish line. She said it was a bit depressing to finish the 5K in last place but I call it a huge and very cool life experience. How often does anyone get the chance to finish last in a race. I checked the results for her age group and overall. On a healthy day she would have won her age group and the overall 5K easily. To me that last place finish is that much more significant. | 