Notes
After the wait, I was feeling pretty uneasy about racing, but as usual (though not as often lately), that went away once I started racing.
I'm glad I looked at my splits from last year because I knew 40sec was my benchmark. I started off a bit quicker with a 37, then settled into 38's and 39's and hit halfway in 3:12.8 (exciting!). The laps were going by fast and my hurdling form wasn't terrible (it wasn't good, of course, and I was also annoyed how often I was leading with my right leg. Imbalance can hurt later).
I had passed 4th place back on lap 3 and the top 2 were a ways ahead, but I was happy to just run my own race. Though that did lead to a few slower laps with my 8th being right on 40. I picked it up slightly before the last lap, but the top 2 were not coming back to me. I had a solid kick in 34, but not much urgency as I knew it would be a solid time.
Fastest time since 2014 in fact and 10 sec faster than last year. I'm sure there are several reasons for a better race, but I'm just going to assume I'm doing the right things and I need to continue doing these things to get back to race fitness.