Notes
COMMENTS: Interesting race this morning on Turkey Day. The Gobble Gobble Gobble 4 Miler is held in Davis Square, so it was a no-brainer to choose this one to run. I had been nervous, hoping to run under 29:00. My backup goal was under 30:00.
The wrench in the plans for this race was the crowd. It was very crowded and took me 40 seconds to get to the start line, even though I didn't line up that far back. For the first 1/2 mile, I was running a 8:30-9:00 pace, very easy. I tried not to waste energy dodging people and decided not to run hard since I had no chance of meeting my 29-minute goal.
Around the end of the first mile, the crowd cleared and I was able to shift into race pace. By the third mile I was chugging along at a hard pace, with hopes of making it under 30. I pushed hard in the last mile but didn't manage to pick up my pace that much.
The course had some hills, but mostly small. There was one big hill on Central Ave. coming toward Somerville Ave.; that was pretty tough.
I feel pretty happy with my performance, given the race conditions. I think I could have run 29:30 easily if the crowd hadn't held me up (a 7:30 first mile was easily doable). I'm actually impressed at making it in 30:00 given my slow first mile. If you look at the last 3 miles, the splits are eerily similar to my Brian Honan 5k.
Splits:
Mile 1 - 8:02
Mile 2 - 7:30
Mile 3 - 7:18
Mile 4 - 7:10