Notes
35:36, 19th place. (77, 77 feel, 63 dp, SSW10) it’s been a few years since I’ve last raced the Bix course but I not-so-fondly remember the grueling hills the course has to offer. I have been putting in a lot of work recently and that being said I didn’t feel as flat as I expected today, though I definitely didn’t feel like I was going to crush it. Started up Brady St and I was about 20m off the lead pack. My goal was to be relatively conservative then open it up coming down the second mile. I did just that coming through in 5:15 then bombed a 4:37 to mile 2. I then worked on settling into a rhythm but the second hill at McClellan wrecked my rhythm. I slowed down considerably but maintained contact with a couple guys. At mile 3 (5:08) I was feeling the heat and humidity slightly but I’d been grabbing water at every station along the way and dumping it over my heat and that helped some. We made the hairpin turn and then it was back up the other side of McClellan and that’s where I think I lost the race. I was pushing but didn’t have the power in my legs to rehear like I had planned. I struggled back up the hill and despite feeling awful, hit a 5:05 split. I did a better job of staying engaged in the 5th mile sticking on Charlie Lawrence of Brooks Hanson’s as we whittled down the lead on a string of African runners ahead of us. I was fighting the urge to settle on the long climb and ran a 5:18. With two miles to go I knew I was on PR pace but we were still going uphill and even when we crested the top and had a half mile or so flat I could not find my next gear and ran a sluggish 5:19. Finally hit the last downhill on Brady St and I opened up on Lawrence, giving chase to an African we’d reeled in. The jarring on the steep downslope caused a small but noticeable cramp in my side. I was over-striding and slamming into the pavement, on top of that I was probably dehydrated by this point. I turned for the last 400 or so meters and tried to dig as deep as I could. Mostly to hold off Lawrence. I am definitely not ecstatic about my performance, I mean it was 5:05 pace for half of a half marathon. However considering the lack of specific training and building my legs back up to tolerate mileage I feel like I did a good job today. It gives me something to go off of moving forward and a nice boost of knowing, even without taking the race seriously I beat my college times by 30 seconds when I almost always felt like I had something to prove.