Against the wisdom of KathyG, I took it out too fast. I felt like I was running at a comfortable pace but mile 1 came up and they had a kid yelling times "8:08" is what I heard and almost fell over. That's way faster than I've been training/should have been running. The plan should have been to negative split the race but instead when I heard that solid mile time, i decided to see how long I could keep it up. I was pretty consistent/solid through mile 3.something. We took the left and hit the hills and that hurt me a little. I think I was still running ~8:30s though. The mile 5 marker came and my legs gave out on me. I think from there to the mile 6 marker was ~10 minute mile. Big drop off and that kind of upset me. I think I let the mental stuff creep in and allowed my legs to poop out. When I turned the corner and saw the 6 mile marker though I kicked it into gear and sprinted the last .27 (which also tells me I could have run that last mile faster). I passed a bunch of people in the chute which was cool and heard "nice finishing kick" a couple times. Overall, I was happy...I wanted to go between 8:30 and 9 min pace and ran an 8:50.

Wear less layers - Josh warned me I'd be too hot and he was right. Really glad I took off my pants though, that would have been brutal.

Take it out a little slower and work on negative splitting the race.

Work on blocking out negative mental thoughts - keep pushing all the way home.

Drive the course before hand...I think knowing what that last mile looked like and how much I had left could have helped. It seemed like that last mile took forever but if I knew one or two landmarks I could have tricked myself I think.

Walked to the car (~.5 mile). Went to Josh's for a great cookout with some BT folks! Hit the roller last night when I got home.


I took it out a little faster than I should have and I let that be an "excuse" at the end for me to slow down a little. Live and learn :)