Notes
Perfect weather, perfect storm, everything clicked today. I was 5th on the team through one mile at ~5:15, with Shane, Dom, Zayac, Tom, and I all within 10 ft of one another. Through the first trail loop, from the back I helped make sure that everyone was moving, since I could get a good feel of who on the other teams got out too quickly. Then after that one rise in the back of the loop, I started leading our group through the pack. Everyone stayed together really tightly through about 2.5 miles, around the field and up the road (our 2-mile was ~10:40 according to Shane) then when we got to the back field loop, I broke away with a couple Coast Guard runners and kept passing people. Shane guessed that my 3-mile split was around 15:50. After I got through that section, I just kept moving, grooving and rolling. All the way to the finish, 3 Coast Guard guys and I kept moving around, passing each other, pushing each other through. Then around 600-800m to go, I started to accelerate nicely, and kicked hard down the last straight and almost caught one more runner right at the line.
So I guess my splits through 3 miles were 5:15, 5:25, 5:10, and the last two were ~5:15 so I was pretty consistent. I think the 2nd mile was slow because we did have to move around a lot of people, and there are two significant (for this course) rises
Excluded from PR because UMD is short (Jeremy says 300m short)