Notes
Really happy with this race! My goal was 27:30 / 5:30 pace so just snuck under that. Race went pretty much according to plan. My plan was to open with a 5:40, then try to hold 5:30s the rest of the way and get faster as the race went downhill.
First mile went exactly as planned with 5:42. Then 2nd mile 5:32 so right on, and 2nd mile had more elevation gain too. The pace started to feel hard in the third mile. It was slower, 5:39. But then the downhill started to ease the pain, and the 5:12 fourth mile definitely helped the overall pace. The last mile I held on strong, knowing I didn't have much left. Helped to have all the 5k people to run past and more downhill. The last uphill was a little long but not too bad; knowing how close I was made it easy to push through. And seeing the clock - saw the time was still sub-27 as I was coming to the top before the turn to the final straight. The clock turned out to be 10 seconds too fast, but still very happy with 27:25.
Excited to see I am in this shape, and what the future will hold. Hopefully with the mileage increases over the winter I'll see further improvements. For now enjoying coming to the end of the season and looking forward to a good Mill Cities next week.