Notes
First Grand Prix race since Lone Gull in September! I was not feeling really "Ready to GO", but did give it all I had today for sure. I started in about the 5th row and it was all squeezed in and tight. The GO command was yelled and it was chaos! People were everywhere and I was getting a little boxed. In reality I bet it was not a bad thing to get held up a bit in the beginning as I went through the first mile in 5:10, much faster than my anticipated pace for the day. I was hoping to run between 5:20- 5:25 for each mile. Based on my current fitness or lack there of, I figured a 16:30-45 would be about max for me today. Then the competitive juices started to flow. I was 8th or 9th Whirlaway guy around a mile and a half and just told myself to hold on until two miles. Well I did hold on and was actually starting to catch people when I ran a 5:14 second mile. Kev was up on me by about 30 meters for a good while and it looked like he was coming back, so I just told myself to get up to him before a half mile to go. Cool side note: Racing with a GPS watch kicks butt for my mental state! I was able to tell myself to get to a half mile left and just turn it up a notch. I caught Kev with a half to go, and pushed as hard as I could by him as I knew he could out kick me if we were even in the last tenth. I got myself a decent enough gap on him and was picking people off left and right. I hit the final tenth and knew that I had to sprint to keep all of those people behind me including Kev. He was lurking and most likely could have out sprinted me if he wanted to. I was able to cross the line with a "chip" time of 16:18 which was enough to make me feel a bit better about my fitness and racing frame of mind. When it got tough, I thought about helping the team and pushing as best I could. Thinking about other teammates out there killing themselves for me always makes me dig down a bit deeper for sure. I wound up 5th on the team and as a team we were 7th today. I have a feeling this is one of the worst open finishes we have ever had as a team, but the people that were able to race today did the best we could and certainly gave their best effort! Always proud to be a part of that! Looking forward to more races and better team finishes!