Notes
Park to Park Half, official time 1:08:40, 7th place
The race was moved due to flooding on the normal course, so we ended up running four 5k loops plus a .7 add on somewhere else in Waterloo. There was a pretty stiff wind out of the NE which made the backside of the loop tough. Will Chris and I were clicking off 5:05-5:15 miles the first couple loops and it was feeling comfortable. The first loop was very nice as we were able to take all the tangents. But once we started lapping people it made it a lot harder because we had to run on the outside which ended up adding quite a bit of distance by the end.
Around mile 7 or 8 I think it was, I gapped Will and Chris a bit and just tried to keep the pace in the 5:10 ballpark, which I did a pretty good job of until 11 and 12. Those were the more uphill miles of the loop and 12 was mostly into the wind. The sustained effort caught up to my legs in mile 12 and with taking the headwind solo I lost my pace a bit. The last mile we had the wind at our back for the second half and I was able to finish pretty strong. My watch measured the course at 13.23, which is probably about right given all the added distance from running around people.
If we could have taken the tangents the whole way I think I would have been very close to my PR of 67:57. Nonetheless, I am very happy with this especially after being sick last month. I am in a pretty good spot with 4 weeks to Chicago. I'm excited for Capital Pursuit next weekend, I've never raced 10 miles before and I think it'll be fun