Notes
Missed my goals. Overall, I'm disappointed with this race. First off, I underestimated the MIT guys and that's completely my fault. I went in overconfident and that was a big problem. A list of thoughts:
1) I truly raced this one. Everyone went out behind a kid from Coast Guard, but he ended up running 80s. That was great for me, but the pack was starting to grow uncomfortably large. I think we had 10 people all together through the first mile and a half.
2) Once people stopped tailing Coast Guard, everyone tried to stay in a group, which meant that the back half of the group dropped back-to-back 77s or something similar. While that can work, it blew up a lot of people.
3) Through the 5K, I was sitting in either 7th or 8th, right behind the Coast Guard guy, but there was an MIT guy right behind me as well.
4) Coast Guard started slowing down with about two miles to go, so I tried to make a move on the backstretch. The wind kicked up a tiny bit and I slowed down. He pulled around me and the MIT guy went with him. I didn't have a response to that, and they started getting away. Tactically, I made a mistake right there. Coast Guard had been leading the entire way and was probably just trying to shake us off.
5) Once I lost the 7-8 group, I started struggling even more. By about 5 laps to go, they were about 50 meters ahead and I was starting to suck wind. They ended up catching Josh and finished about 30 seconds ahead of me.
6) The problem with this race was that I ended up getting caught where I wanted to run my own race, but couldn't do that and still score. Ultimately, I made the right decision to go with the group because of the wind, but it was a tough race.
7) I pr'ed (I think) in the 8K en route (26:57), which is a good sign for next year and slightly worrying during the race. I think that freaked me out a bit as well.
8) Thank you to Lane for calling splits, Alex and Vanacore for cheering at the start/finish line and everyone else for cheering on the backstretch! It really does help.