Woke up at 3:10 and made my way down to Salt Lake. On my way down I ate a bowl of frosted mini wheats and had a banana and drank a lot of my powerade. When I got to the buses at Rice Eccles it was 88 degrees outside so I decided I better drink as much as I could between then and when the race started. Just sitting on the bus waiting for it to pull out it felt like I was in an oven. It was a weird morning with it being hotter at 6:00 a.m. then it was at 10:00 a.m.
I did a 3 mile warm-up going up the canyon rather than down. Then did 4 strides right before the start of the race. My plan was to shoot for around 5:00 minute miles but right before the race started I changed my mindset to being okay with 5:05's because of the heat and the wind.
The race started with some kid that looked like he was a high school kid going to the lead. He did pretty well for about 1.5 miles then I didn't see him again. Brett was up on me about 10 meter after 1 mile and about 20 after 2 miles and Jason was halfway in between us. I think I caught up to Jason at about the 2 mile marker. Jason and I ran together for the next 3 miles or so. I was hoping to work with Jason because of the wind and I let him go by me so I could draft off him, but I could tell it wasn't his day. It seemed like he was laboring quite a bit at that point already and we weren't going as fast as I wanted to be going so just a minute after talking to him about working together through the wind, I decided to take off and go it alone, feeling bad about ditching him right after I had talked to him about working together, but knowing if I was going to have a good race I needed to keep going at a decent clip.
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful Brett had between 100 and 200 meters on me at the 5 mile mark and that didn't change a lot over the next 8.1 miles. There were a couple times where I lessoned the gap and thought I might have a shot at catching back up to him, but I never really came that close to him. I went out conservatively because I always race better when I go out consevertavily, but with the wind this may have been one of those races where I should've just tucked in behind Brett and let him pull me to a good race.
I felt really good most of the race. I didn't hurt really bad until the last mile so I think for running by myself I ran a good pace. I just wonder if it would have been close to the same effort despite going a little faster if I would have gone with Brett from the start. Towards the end of the race I had no idea how far back Jason was but I did not feel his presence at all so I felt pretty comfortable.
I left my watch on auto splits so these splits are a little faster than they really were as my watch measured the course at 13.48 miles because it alwasy measure the miles a little short, but my splits per my watch were: 4:55, 4:54, 4:57, 5:09, 5:00, 5:04, 4:55, 5:02, 4:48, 5:08, 4:56, 4:57, 5:12, 2:42.
Overall, given the conditions, I was thrilled with this race. Going in knowing Brett was in the race I knew my chances of winning were slim to none. I knew there were going to be some other great runners so I would be extremely fortunate to come in 2nd place. I was hoping to go low 1:06, but I know that it was a lot slower this year because of the heat and wind and 1:07:38 is still a big aided half marathon personal best. I have closed the gap on Brett as he beat me by 2:35 in the Salt Lake Half and 2:13 in the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon. He only beat me by :54 in this one (granted he didn't have anyone pushing him).
After the race I did 2 laps on the bark chip trail around Liberty Park which amounted to about 3 miles.
It was great seeing some familiar faces at the finish line and to get to catch up with some of you. Given the conditions I was sure glad I didn't choose to run the marathon. There is no way I would have been anywhere near Fritz in that race.
| 