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Notes

Ron Daws 25K. Course PR for sure. 6:50 avg pace is encouraging; I was hoping to avg 7:00 pace, which would've been good enough for a course PR. It was cold and a bit windy. I felt warm enough through the first 2/3 of the race, then started to get chilled all over. I paced well; probably a negative split, felt strong well into the last lap.

Happy with this result.

ETA: Negative split -- miles 8-14 were run almost a minute faster than miles 1-7, and the last 1.5 miles were slightly faster than the average pace of 6:49, so YES, negative split.

Interesting to see that mile 7 and mile 12 were my fastest 2 miles by far (6:35 pace), and my max HR on these portions reached a relative Min (low 160s down from low 170s). They are roughly along the same stretch of road, Baker Road, with a nice descent, followed by the turn onto Bren Road.

My GPS time was 1:45:58 versus Chip time of 1:45:45. I think I forgot to immediately press Stop when I finished ... which is pretty cool considering that my pace for the last 0.53 miles was 6:28 by GPS. Taking off the 13 seconds for this last stretch means I was kicking it in at 6:03 average pace for 0.53 miles.

I started out with Jeffrey, but he could tell I wanted to push the pace a little and he let me go on very soon after the start. Matt caught up to me and we ran together for a short while, then he accelerated ahead maybe at the 2 mile marker or so. I kept him in sight for a while, but he kept surging ahead until I really couldn't see him anymore. Then, quite a bit later, on our way up Puke's Peak for the first time, I caught back up to Matt. He had slowed. He's 9 days out from running his first Boston, so I'm thinking he needs to scale it back to save something for the marathon. I think I said something stupid as we approached the big hill, like, "The fun is just about to begin." (Jeffrey ran much more conservatively, also running his first Boston this year.) I had passed James and his friend early on, and then was passed by them, then I passed them again over the course of the race. They seemed to be running it as a workout, where they ran strong for the middle miles, but took it easy at the beginning and end. Anyhow, great to see James and catch up a bit. After the race, I jogged back to the Hopkins Pavilion and ended up joggin with Eric P., who is another guy I always seem to run close to (didn't realize it was him until looking at the results). Dennis W. was at this race and finished not too far behind me, yet I don't remember seeing him once! Mark N. was a little ways back as well. I was able to pass Wanda G. late in the race, on her way to another State age group record -- she ran a 1:48:50 at age 55!!