Valentine's Day Run/Walk - Run15k

Started off just pacing off of the group. Was in the little pack, probably sitting around in 6th place or so. Around mi 3 two people dropped and I found myself in 4th feeling really good. At the turnaround I got a chance to see the people behind me. The guys in 5/6 were pretty far back, maybe 1/4 mi or so. The guy in the lead was already pretty far ahead, maybe by a min and the guy in 3rd was maybe 10 ft in front of me. At the turn around we started running into crosswinds (10 mph) and the guy in front of me starts to slow down on the gusts. I could tell he was getting tired and I caught up with him. So we're running side-by-side for maybe a mi or so. This guy had a really nice, easy looking stride and I didn't think that I could make it past him. I later found out he runs ultra marathons and wins almost all of them. I had enough of the side-by-side running and so I dropped a little stride and got about 20 ft in front of him. Cool, I'm in 3rd and still feeling really good!! The guy in 2nd is the fast guy (Mike) that I run with in the group runs on Sat morn. So as we make a turn directly into the headwinds and I'm slowly catching up to Mike. At around mi 7 I finally caught him and asked him hows he's doing. He said he's feeling low on energy and to keep going and catch the guy. Just as I passed Mike a slight uphill directly into the winds started. I think I had a 6:50 pace going then and I thought I was spent and though people were going to start blazing by me. Thankfully it must've been hard for everyone else because no one caught up and I pulled in the lead guy a little bit. The course flattened out and a slight downhill came on. By this time the lead guy was about 20 ft in front of me. Crazy. It finally set in that I have a really good chance of winning this thing since the lead guy dropped back so much (or I caught up so fast). I caught him towards the end of the downhill and am now right on his heels. He knew I was there because he looked back to see where I was. So its the pace car, him then me. We make the final turn at about 8.5 mi. He started to speed up tad but I stayed right on him. Then around 8.6 I noticed he had a slight limp, and soon as I noticed that I kicked on the donkey afterburners and got past him. This was the final kick and I was sprinting as hard as I could (around 5:15-5:25 pace) that I could sustain until the finish. He couldn't respond and I ended up grabbing the win by around 5 seconds. I win!

Absolutely NOTHING!

Crossed the line. Caught my breath from the last kick and walked around a little bit. Mike came in and we headed out for a short recovery jog.


Could use more speed work for those final sprints.


Race was set up pretty well. Everything was on time and there were 3-4 water stops on the 15k route. Police officers at all intersections directing traffic. That was nice. Can't beat hot chocolate, Seroogy's chocolates and a cheese block at the finish!