Today's race was a breakthrough race for me. In fact, it was one of many breakthrough races that I have had over the course of the last 15 months or so. I have run a number of 10k races over the past year, however most of them have been either on slow courses, in bad weather conditions, or both. My previous 10k pr was set during the last 10k of a 15k race that I was running. So, this was one of the first opportunities that I have had to really test myself against some of the top competition in the state of Utah, and against some darn good out of state (or country) competition as well. I do have to say that Bob Woods really does a good job at putting together a strong field for this race. Anyhow, I warmed up by running with Adam Wende to the start of the race, and then did a few strides and jogged around some more to stay loose before the start of the race. We had to wait for the train to cross the tracks at one section of the race course before we started, so the race started almost 10 minutes late, but that was no big deal. I was also looking around at the field of runners before the race, and I think that I saw more serious, competitive men and women at this race than I have ever seen at any race that I have been in before. We lined up and crammed ourselves together at the start line, and at the gun the entire field took off at almost a break neck speed in order to get some separation and to avoid getting trampled by everyone else. After the start of the race, there was a very quick separation between the runners, as the top athletes quickly moved to the front, and a sort of pecking order was established. After the first couple hundred meters I was in 9th or 10th, but by the time we were about a half mile in everything had kind of gotten shaken out and I was sitting in 14th behind Hayden Hawks, John Kotter, Clay Mays, and a guy in yellow (Sasha thinks the yellow guy might be one of the race directors for Boulder to Boulder). After that, there was not a whole lot of change as far as placement goes during the course of the race. Splits were as follows: 4:28 - my mile pr. It shows how slow my mile pr is, and also how much downhill was in this mile. 14th place. 4:32 (9:00) - also beat my mile pr. I passed Hayden near the end of this mile and moved into 13th. John, and yellow guy were a little ways in front of me, with Clay holding a decent gap on them (the gap was probably less than 10 seconds from me to them, and from them to Clay). 5:02 (14:02) - There was one decent sized hill in this mile, but still some downhill as well. Still in 13th, but closing the gap very, very slowly. 4:57 (18:59) - Closing the gap just a little bit more. Clay has opened up a slightly bigger lead on the other guys, but may or may not have gapped me by a little more. 10:13 (29:12) - I couldn't find the mile marker at 5 miles, but I am assuming that the 5th mile was about equal to the mile before it. A fair amount of downhill, and near the end of the mile the course starts heading uphill. The 6th mile was uphill the entire way, and that mile hurt. I was pushing to try and close the gap between me and the other guys, but the gap was closing so slowly that by about halfway through the 6th mile I started to think that I would never catch them. As we neared the 6 mile mark I finally got to where I was maybe about 3 seconds behind John, and yellow guy. Clay was also coming back fairly quickly but had been so far ahead that I didn't really even notice. 1:01 (30:13) - I started to really push and try to kick in just before the 6 mile mark. I passed yellow guy just past that mark, but John was able to pull away from me over the last section of the race. John caught Clay just before the finish, while I put a few seconds on yellow guy during that same time period. I probably could have gotten another second or two out of myself on the kick, but it hurt enough already, that having secured 12th place, and knowing that I wasn't going to catch anyone else I had a hard time pushing myself any harder than I already was. I am happy with how I finished considering we were going uphill. I would have been happy with a 1:01 finish even if it was flat. So, I ended up 12th place, in a field that consisted of 5 Africans, Seth Pilkington, Kyle Perry, Teren Jameson, a guy that used to run for Weber State and has 4:03 mile speed, and the guys I already mentioned earlier. So, I am happy with the placing considering who I was running against, and I am happy that the distance from them to me was respectable for the most part. This is another one of those stepping stones that I am using to push myself to get faster and to eventually get that trials qualifier.
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