Set goal of holding 165HR for 1st 2 miles, this lasted for the 1st mile and then HR took off. Mile 1 felt good, overall effort was pretty good. This section of the course is absolutely straight, slight hill for the 1st 0.5, then nice and flat. During this length I was running with Keith At the beginning of the 2nd mile is a short but steep hill, this helped pick up the pace but it was short lived, the downhill is followed up by short uphill, enough to lose all momentum. Keith pulled ahead by about 25ft at this point and stayed at this distance for most of the race. This is also where my HR started rising and I had to concentrate on keeping the effort from blowing up the entire race.
This is also the section I noticed Chris was running right behind me. At the beginning he said he was going to let me pace hime so he would be sure to finish in the 22's. I thought he had fell far behind during the 1st mile but he showed up and stuck right with me during the remainder of the race.
Around mile 1.5 is my favorite part of the course. Cross a covered bridge and then the course is a steady incline for the next 0.6 miles. Takes a lot of effort to maintain the pace! The nice part is the course makes a loop and you get to come back down this nice steady slope. The 2.7 mark comes as I cross the covered bridge. This is where I decided to start to increase pace, was able to hold pretty steady on an increased rate for 0.25 but then ran out of gas. Didn't have much of a kick left for the last 100m. I managed to close the gap on the runners in front of me but not enough to catch them. Keith lended up being roughly 20s ahead of me, same as last race.

Maybe wait a little longer before making the kick to the finish line. But I also think I didn't push hard enough during the race. I held a steady pace through out but not sure I pushed over the edge. Need to have a race where I don't worry about not finishing and push extremely hard. This way I will find my true capabilities!

Warm down??


Best part of the race was that Isaac ran in it with me also. He was able to finish 2nd in his AG with a time of 29:57, knocked 2m off his time from January. With no running at all.

Other items: Chris used me as his Pacer and finished 2nd in his AG (30-34) and was 6s ahead of me. I was 4th in my AG (35-39), I think I may have some work ahead of me to stay on the podium for each race in the tour. Most likely going to have to be sub-22 to come close.