What a great race today... Sunny, nice temps, and great company.
Got to bed a little later than I wanted to last night but woke up feeling great. Got to the race to check in and get on the bus. Started to realize that I was a little dehydrated but no way to hydrate after getting on the bus. Did a few miles warm up with James, Dustin, Bill, and Ruth (Ruthio). But after having to "go" a couple times before the race thought maybe it was not dehydration, just dry mouth and lips.
Race started about 10-15 mins late, very unusual for St George City race, but had good company at starting line, even with the rogue runners...
Race started and a couple guys really took off. Ryan Newman and Dustin went off after them and James and I kind of held back just a bit. First mile in 5:12 but downhill quite a bit.. By the park exit it was just Dustin with a guy from up north I think, and then Ryan then me. Shortly after I passed Ryan thinking, "he is just gonna let me go by for now but I better watch my back..." About mile 4 I passed the second place guy and could tell he was starting to labor a bit. So it was Dustin leading by about 20-30 seconds, then me, fighting the urge to look back and see where Ryan and James were. As we rounded Snow Canyon Parkway headed to the church I glanced back and saw Ryan and James not too far behind. Ryan freaks me out cause he just doesn't look like he is really struggling ever and at any moment he could just drop a couple sub 5:00 miles...
Going up the hill from the church got me wondering if I started too fast on that downhill but after chasing that thought out of my head I told myself, "just over a mile to go and if I was going to catch Dustin I would have to go now." I gained on him a bit but by the time we finished the hill I needed a few seconds to ward off fatigue. By the time we hit the roundabout with .2 to go I realized I had lost focus and relaxed a bit too much and Ryan was right on my heels. Without thinking I just decided to pick it up until I couldn't sprint any faster.
I put a little distance between me and Ryan and realized I had gained quite a bit on Dustin so decided to keep it going and see if I could catch him. Soon realized I coundn't and started to back off a bit then I saw the clock....
34:50!!!
I was shooting for somewhere in the 36:00-37:00 range! But at this point I was not going to go over 35:00 and gave it one last push. Ended up finishing at 34:59!! My last 10k was almost 41 mins at summer games in June '08 and so this was a great surprise. I let Dustin beat me by 3 or 4 seconds so it is hard to be 100% excited but I really could not be happier with the time.
Splits:
5:12 -like I mentioned, quite a bit of downhill
5:43 -settling into a comfortable pace with a few hills in the park
5:30 -feeling good, more downhill
5:47 -hitting some more uphill through the houses
5:52 -everyone just kind of holding their place and waiting to make a move
5:53 -deceivingly slow as we had the uphill from the church, but this is where I was trying to make my move on Dustin
.21 in 1:02 -4:49 pace, but garmin says I got down to 4:06 pace at one point. I wish I could hold that pace for a mile!
Congrats Dustin and everyone else! | 