Notes
Laps were 6:27, 7:03, 7:07, and 25s for the last .07 as the watch measured, because I saw I was right below 21 and wanted to keep it that way. Wasn't meant to be, but considering that I started my long warm-up (9.4 miles before the gun went off) not feeling good at all, a lot of the warm-up feeling like absolute shit, this was really impressive. And surprising. I guess the training is going well.
Took it out waaaay too fast because I had no plan. I surprised myself by how good I felt the first mile and basically just tried to hold on for the rest of it. I got annoyed by some guy with his dog on a leash because it (the leash that suddenly went all the way across the sidewalk because man decided to go left while dog went right) almost cut me off and that would not have been fun, as the only way to slow down would be through impact or falling.
I also trailed behind second place female for a bit until I realized I was steady and she was slowing down. She fought for it for a bit, but then eventually fell back. 1st place was way ahead (found out later it was a 15-year with a 19-something time. damn), so I basically ran solo for the last mile, except for overtaking a few guys in the last mile. Like I said, when I came within sight of the finish and the time, I sprinted in for a hope of sub-21, but still, awesome showing. This time last year I did a similar kind of sandwich run (11.8 open, 4.3 close). This time, I made it all one run, but ran 9.4 before, and had a choppy cool-down of 6.78 miles.
HR weirdly low for the race part. I was struggling with it and tiredness for the first part of the warm-up, so I don't know if it's all connected.
Got second female overall, but I could already tell there was not a lot of competition at the starting line. The high schoolers and their coaches must all be competing somewhere.
Also, the school I ran for got fastest school, so I'm going to take some of the credit :-)