Notes
Solid race tonight at Moonlight Chase over in Eldridge. It cooled down from earlier but was still pretty humid at race start, even though the sun was down, still probably 80 degrees at race start. Got out pretty fast from the gun and me and Charlie (paul- pv grad, 14:30 in the 5k this year at iowa state) were leading until the 1200 or so, he put a few feet on me and another random guy passed me and went with Charlie. I came through the mile in 4:51 feeling it a bit and being gapped by those two. They built a 15 meter lead on me and I just tried to focus on my turnover and breathing. but honestly thought I was already out of the race, being dropped and feeling like I was going all out. Eventually, the random dude dropped Charlie and I found a second wind and started to gain, finally catching Charlie at the 2 mile mark coming through in 9:53 (5:02 for that mile). Struggling with breathing a bit, but figured if I could catch up to the other dude I could try and gap him and then prepare for the last mile. Happened exactly as I planned, caught him around the 2.5 mark and preceeded to drop him and start pushing. Came through the 3 in 14:53 (4:59 split on my watch) and tried to change gears and start pushing the last mile. Wasn't sure where the other guy or Charlie was, and I didn't wanna get run down so I kept pushing, but was deff starting to ride the pain train and my breathing was catching up on me. Finally hit the turn w/ 800 to go and started to turnover more. Kept increasing, hit the home stretch and started all out kicking. Announcer said I was at 19:30 so I thought I still had a chance at the record, ended up JUST missing it (Nick has it at 19:48) as I came across in 19:49. Super happy with it either way, its almost a full minute faster than I ran last year, and ties the 2nd fastest time on the course ever. The random guy ended up dropping out, and I put 30 seconds on Charlie the last 1.5 miles, so that was deff a confidence booster being able to drop and run away from a 14:30 guy, and it was nice payback since he got the best of me last year. In general, for being in the middle of a 90 mile week, legs felt good, race went well, may have been a little hot, but besides that, I couldn't be more pleased