Notes
500 entered. 344 people show up on a windy, cool day with spitting rain. Starting line company include Elliot S( the projected winner unless he stops to drink a cappacino during the race), Bram right behind me in his strategic position, Joe W and several young guys plus a 30 some year old black woman right next to me who looks as if she may be able to break 35 min on a good day. I am just hoping she doesn't trip me out of the gate.
Elliot tells me he wants to use this as a tempo run and hopes we don't go out too hard. I told him I was planning on running first mile between 5:45-5:50 if he wanted to run together and he could take off at his whim if he desired. He said this sounded good. I told him I would appreciated the company at this pace as I wanted to hold 5:45/mile pace if possible.
The gun sounds and several people including Joe W go out hard. It takes me 1/3 mile to catch up to Joe W and a couple of the other young-uns and about 1/2 mile to reach the other two as they are dying a hard death early on into the race. I pull up to Elliot about .4 miles in and we proceed to run right at 5:45 pace on the way back toward Good Hope Street. Several of the laggers decide they would like to take our inside tangent and Elliot yells as them to clear out. I swear, some of these people are clueless.
Mile splits per garmin: 5:49 / 5:47 / 5:46 / 23.1 for a 17:45 time and a garmin distance of 3.09 miles.
SM mat splits: 5:49.8 / 5:51.9 / 5:40.3 / 22.88 for 17:45.0. Elliot clears the finish at 17:43.4. I am 1.6 seconds behind him. That is cool and very close. I felt good during the race and felt my kick was as strong as it has been.
Bram runs a strong third with a 18:43 and Joe W nearly 50 seconds behind in 19:22 for 4th place.
Again: The highlight of the day took place later as we went up to StL and watched SC teams compete in Sectionals. Brandon led the 4 x 800 relay to a second place with a 2:00 anchor split then won the 1600 and 3200 races in 4:32/9:46 in nasty rain with strong, swirling winds. SC mens team finished 2nd place overall and taking about a dozen runners/throwers to Sate next week.