Notes
Good race. Tailed Alex Booth for 2.5 miles and then caught up as he got tired. That put me in the strange position of doing a long run for home at the halfway point on a two-loop course. I definitely struggled but so did everyone else. I hung onto first place and then with about a mile to go I realized I had it won. Ended up winning by 50 seconds. A story of patience and caring about place more than time.
In retrospect spikes were tough on this course because it had some short pavement segments. Fortunately I was able to run in the grass on the side of the course and that was actually faster than the pavement. I might have been in trouble in a stretch duel but it turned out that what really mattered was climbing really steep grass hills, which you have to do four times on this course. The spikes were critical for that. But I think I would have preferred not to have the sixth pin under my metatarsals.
This was a very nice turnaround from last week.