Notes
Capital Pursuit 10M, 51:45 for 4th
Watch splits: 5:00, 5:09, 5:26, 5:38, 5:05, 5:17, 5:03, 4:53, 4:52, 4:46
Solid race. Going in I really had no clue what to expect for a time. It was around 30 degrees and an 18mph wind out of the NW. The NW wind made a ton of the 1st half of the race have a headwind, especially the long climb up Keo Way straight into it. I knew my key to racing well would be to run conservatively the 1st half and give myself a chance to blast the last few downhill and tailwind miles.
The race started and Austin, Stan, and Cody broke away quickly along with some 5k runners. Quickly formed a small pack with Tyson, Khan, and myself. We rolled through the 1st couple downtown miles without much of note happening. We turned north out of downtown and started climbing up towards Drake. We dropped Khan before mile 3 which was kind of surprising. From there Tyson and I were both of the run conservative mentality, but me moreso. He probably had a 5m gap on me most of the climb. Once we turned left on Clark then south on 24th and 25th near Drake I made a small move, not really trying to drop Tyson but just trying to get our pace back down, that was the 5:05 fifth mile.
Then we turned back into the wind down Kingman and we slowed again. I was mainly leading Tyson at this point with him occasionally coming up on my shoulder but for the most part he was drafting off me into the wind, which I was fine with. I wasn't feeling super great but I was still trying to vary the pace a bit and see if I could drop him. Then we turned south on Polk Blvd and got a nice tailwind again. Picked up a pace a little after the turn onto Polk, but was mainly just trying to find a rhythm with the tailwind.
I really didn't put any forethought into when I would make a move, but once we crossed the I-235 bridge on Polk it just clicked in my head that now was the time. We had a bit of uphill after the interstate bridge and I really hammered it. I could hear Tyson's footsteps getting quieter, but just wanted to keep the hammer down. We turned left on Ingersoll about a half mile later, I didn't look back but I could tell from the way the volunteers were cheering that I had a gap. Then the last 3 miles were generally all downhill and downwind, I kept the gas down and we had a right turn on 40th to hop over to Grand for the run into downtown. I looked back at that corner and I had a really solid gap, but I knew if I didn't keep the foot on the gas coming down the hill he could catch me. Was running hard the last couple miles but probably not quite all out. Gave a look back at the turn to head over to Locust and that was the 1st point where I knew Tyson had no shot at catching me.
Was wearing the Alpha Flies and almost fell coming around the last turn. It was a left turn and my right shoe rolled over on itself kind of turning my ankle, probably from how high stack those shoes are. Just stumbled a lil and didn't lose a ton of momentum thankfully. Coming down the final stretch I could see the clock tick over 51:00, the Runablaze 5-pt time is 51:40, so I started sprinting all out to try to get that. Once I realized I wasn't gonna get it I eased up a little bit and crossed the line in 51:45.
Overall I'm super satisfied with this race. It was not a good day for running fast, and it was still my fastest Cap Pursui time by over 30 seconds. In perfect conditions I know I could have run a good deal faster than this, and I really haven't even done that great of training this fall for being prepared for these longer races. Excited to see what I can do in a half with some bigger mileage training. I've now run this race 3 times and have been 4th, 5th, and 4th lol just can't break into the top 3