CTM5K2010

Day 598 - August 21, 2010

Today it was clicking! I intentionally let all the kids sprint out ahead at the start of the race and waited for the path to widen before getting up to race pace. The last thing I wanted to do was knock an over ambitious youngster down at the bottleneck. At the half mile, I was comfortably in the top 15 and working my way up through the pack. I hit the mile mark in 5:50 and was in 6th place and right on the heels of the lead pack as we started the first climb of any length. I quickly passed the next two runners to move into 4th and set my sights on 2nd and 3rd place. The climb was a little over a quarter of a mile, and when I reached the crest and made the turn back down, I managed to get the inside angle and slip past those two and move into 2nd place. First place was about 5-10 seconds ahead and looked to be running comfortably, but wasn't really accelerating on the down hill which allowed me to close the gap and pull up on his shoulder. I thought for a second that he was going to fade, so I made a move to get into first. My expectations for this race was a solid top 10 finish and at the halfway mark, I was leading. Probably the first time in a race with over 100 people since I was in college.

We started back up the hill toward the 2 mile mark and unfortunately I surrendered first place back. We went through 2 in 12:02 - much better than I had expected. I wish I could say that I put on a furious charge and managed to regain the lead, but the leader was able to pull away. I did hang on for second place and finished in 18:46, which is over a minute faster than last year. I also received a $35 gift certificate to my favorite running shop for my effort. All in all, a much better day than I was expecting.