Notes
Goal before the race was to run at least sub 33 and give a really hard effort. Chris didn't show up, which took off some pressure but I knew it was going to be harder to make myself suffer during the race. Splits were: 4:53, 5:49, 4:58, 5:16, 5:07, 5:30, 59 (.2) Pretty nasty/tough course with the elevation profile here: http://www.runningahead.com/maps/65d18a27d2934bf3aeb586b702c10b98
The first mile lost about 50 ft. and I started out nice and relaxed before finding my rhythm a couple of minutes into the race. The second mile had a killer hill that was just over half a mile long with over 200 ft. of elevation gain. I was crawling up the 2nd half of the hill but since it was so early on, didn't kill me too badly. The third mile was the easiest of the course, lost about 150 ft. but I was still recovering from the hill. The fourth mile was a little more flat, with slight elevation lost, but a short uphill and an 180 degree turnaround really messed up my rhythm. I wanted to really push the last two miles, but it was just too hard to redline it with all the elevation changes. I tried to push some the 5th mile but right before the marker, there was a hill by the golf course that destroyed me. It was only about a minute long, but this was my slowest part of the race by far, and I had to be running well over 7:00 pace. More hills on the 6th mile and by then, I just wanted to be finished.
This was a frustrating race because it was so hilly and I could never really just flat out run. I was really happy with my time though and it felt more like a hard tempo run than a race.