Started at the front based on last year's results. I run this trail a lot so I tried to stay below redline going up the first major hill. Tried to maintain a good effort so that I wasn't totally out of the race but also kept things somewhat in check. Tried to recover after the climb and then settle into some sort of pace. 8th place at this point and was quickly passed so I stayed with that guy. At the turnaround, we caught 6th place and we ran together for about a 1/4 mile or so. We were now running into a slight headwind and the guy I was running side by side with started to drop back a bit. My thought was he was going to try to draft me so as soon as he started to move back, I put in a pretty good surge and he faded.
Hit the scenic overlook and knew it was all downhill from there so I opened it up as best as I could. Finished strong but my quads were complaining.

Probably could have pushed more. First race in six months, running has just started to ramp up.

1.5 mile cd. Quads started to cramp up a bit! Chatted with Steve (StMaas) for a bit and hung around forever for the awards ceremony.


Relative conditioning, race layoff. Killer course.


You know it's not a PR course going into it so treat it as a challenge. Nice shirts, easy check in, lots of volunteers.
Couple of beefs: the start/finish just doesn't work. It's basically a tight horseshoe which was really tough on the finish.
Awards ceremony: didn't start until well after 10:30 am. This is two hours after the race started. For 5k racers, this was an hour and a half wait. And to boot, they did the 10k awards first so that added another 10 mintues. Didn't get out of there until almost 11:00 am, which was a 2.5 hour commitment for a 21 minute race.