Seeded myself around the 6min/mile group. When we took off the crowd was holding a steady 6:15-6:25 pace, which is where I felt I needed to be in order to break the 40minute barrier. At mile 1 I was right at 6:25. Perfect! As the sun started to come out the humidity rose and I got a little distracted. Miles 2 and 3 were all around 6:30 and I started to get nervous, because I was now around 10 seconds down and I knew I had the big uphill mile at 6. The had mile 3.1 marked and I was right at 20:05, so that was encouraging, that half way out, I was only down 5 sec off my pace. Unfortunately, I had another off mile at 4 miles I had only managed 6:35 and that was with significant effort. Mile 5 had some good downhill and I finally got back onto my target pace of 6:25, but still needed to make up for the :15-:20 I had already lost and mile 6 with its rolling hills and steady incline was on me. I started to debate how bad I wanted to break the 40minutes and finally decided I was going for it!! I dug in and hit the hills with everything I had!!! I finished mile 6 in 6:10!! When I saw this I just charged the last 0.2 and when I saw the clock at 39 I was so pumped. It did change to 40 before I hit it, but I knew my chip time was about 15 seconds back, so the sub-40 was all mine.