This race is in the middle of my marathon training schedule and certainly not one that I tapered in to. My goal was to run it well, but not to full-on "race" it. I had a soft goal of an 8-minute mile pace. I had run this race last year in 1:49:28 (8:21 min/mile). Due to construction downtown, the course had been changed. Last year, A Mountain came early in the course, and this year it came in the middle.

The weather was nice and cool at the start. I saw one of my rivals, and she came over and started with me. She hadn't raced in a while and was doing the 5K (all of the racers were starting together). The first few miles felt really easy and I was hitting 7:40ish for my splits. I ran with my Ragnar team captain for a while. He usually starts slower than me and then beats me handily. We all ran past the finish, and the 5Kers started to sprint which felt a little strange because the rest of us had a lot of race left. As we left the shady downtown area and started heading toward A Mountain, I started to slowing down a bit. It wasn't hot yet, but the sun was shining brightly. The captain had left me, but I ran for a while with one of my other Ragnar teammates. As I started to make it up A Mountain, some of the fast folks were already coming down. I didn't recognize the first woman, but later learned that it was Alica Shay. She and several other fasties came down from Flagstaff to race.

A Mountain is a little over a mile with 400 feet of elevation gain. There is no surging up this sucker. It's all about taking short strides and continuing to move forward. It's really nice when you get toward the top and run around the side because you get a nice view of the city. It's a nice feeling of accomplishment when you get to see just how high you've come. After the short, flat section, it's a steep, fast run down. I tried to stay light on my feet, but you can't avoid some jarring contact.

The course flattened out with just under five miles remaining, and I was hoping to pick the pace up. I also felt a little hungry, so I ate a few of my Sport Beans. The temperature had crept up and was mildly uncomfortable. The next few miles were run along a river path. Occasionally, I made a mental and physical effort to try and pick up the pace, but it didn't stick.

When the course returned to the downtown area, I was feeling pretty beat and knew that my time goal was out of reach. I passed one of my tri friends, and he sped up and ran with me. He said that he figured that I'd catch him. I said that if he felt like taking the race, I wasn't going to stop him. I didn't want to do an all-out sprint for this race, and I didn't feel like it either. We ran together for a bit, then he sped up and beat me by 1 second. When I checked out the chip time results, I had beaten him by 3, but who's counting? ;)

Start a little slower?

I reconnected with some friends after the race. The general consensus was that the new course was harder than last year. It was also warmer this year. I went back to my car to drop of my medal, with the intention of running some cooldown miles and going back to the post race festivities. When I got to there, I thought "Why don't I just sit down for a few minutes?" The minutes came and went, and I decided just to go home. I was exhausted.


This wasn't an A race, so I was probably carrying some fatigue from my workouts. I think that I probably started too fast as well. Still, I took over a minute and a half off my time from last year, so I can't be too upset.