Notes
Planned to go out conservatively initially. But I felt quite good and had a lot of adrenaline from the big field start. I found a rhythm and ended up being aggressive for the first mile plus in the fields. I caught up to Jake and found Rob in the same place. Rob and I ended up being together for most of the race. Jake was having a bad day and fell off.
After catching up to them we went through the first mile and they called out 5:25. Whoa, was not expecting that. But I still felt great so I kept being aggressive and picking off people. Went through the first woods loop, still felt good through the uphill and back onto the fields. Kept up the aggression and kept moving forward. I entered the woods at 2.5 miles still feeling good so decided to keep pushing.
Started feeling a little tired in the big woods loop around 3.5. But I was still catching people so I gritted it out and kept pushing. Got to the 4 mile mark and just about to the hill is where I really started feeling bad. The hill was a real struggle but kept gritting it out. There were less steep sections of the hill where I'd start to feel better and be able to push more, then the hill would get steeper and I'd feel bad again.
Got out to the fields and by then I was pretty tired but still pushing. It followed the same pattern of feeling good, then bad, then good, then bad. Tried to focus on catching people and just getting to the next corner. Gave it my all and ended up a hair above 28 minutes.
That was the toughest 28 minute 8k I've ran. Can't wait to be faster. But compared to my 5k performances before this I ran probably pretty darn close and then did 2 more miles at race effort after that. So overall pretty happy with this race. Especially with my spotty running as of late.
After the interview on Friday a good amount of weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Still waiting to hear back until Monday but I have a very good feeling about it.