As I was driving my way over to the race I was thinking about my goal time of sub 7:00 miles and thinking that was kind of out of reach. I mean my T pace is 7:25 (although based on a 10K last year). My fitness has definitely improved since then but did not know how much. The plan was to start out around 7:00 miles and see how I felt at the turnaround. The first couple miles I did glance at my garmin to judge my pace, but after mile 2 just based everything on RPE. I had never seen the course before either so did not know what to expect. As we got off the flats and into the hillier section is when i started hawking people down. I would pass lots of people on the uphills and maintain on the downhills. At the turnaround at mile 5 I was feeling very good - time to pick these people off one by one. I was not really concerned about racing other people, but just my watch, but picking people off seemed to help my time and kept me energized. So at mile 5 I picked up the pace - miles 5-7 were mainly uphill and is where I would pass a lot of people. As we got back into the flats I turned it up a bit and finished very strong. I really cannot believe i ran a 6:36 min/mile on mile 10!

mile1: 7:01
mile2: 7:22
mile3: 7:03
mile4: 6:56
mile5: 6:47
mile6: 7:08
mile7: 7:01
mile8: 6:56
mile9: 6:47
mile10: 6:36

I could have probably started out a little faster but thats being picky.

water, gatoraide, bagel, bananas - I had to leave right away to move more stuff into the new house.


nothing.


The course was open to traffic so there were a couple crazy drivers out there honking at us telling us to get off the road like 200 people are going to listen. This is just a good small local race.