James W talked me in to doing this race. It was fun because quite a few of the top road racers in Arizona were in attendance. James and I carpooled. As I was driving to his house from Queen Creek I saw that to the northeast, Apache Junction was getting rained on. I caught the corner of it as I got closer. To the northwest, south Phoenix was dry, but overcast. This made for great running conditions.
On Riverton Paul's advice, I made sure to get a good warm-up in. I tried to stay loose and keep my heart rate up, but it was difficult due to the way the race was run. They handicap the start by age and gender. As the clock ticked down to the 7:30am start time, the first runners start out. Then the clock starts up, and James and I were scheduled to start 13 minutes and 52 seconds later. The cool thing about this is I was passing people the whole race. The not-so-cool thing was that it got congested.
Mile 1 - 6:59. My goal was to average 7 minute miles. I was right on. I felt good because I hit it with a lot of bobbing and weaving.
Mile 2 - 7:22. This is where I lost the most time. At the turn around there was major congestion. I almost had to come to a complete halt. I was trying to stay on the sidewalk that ran along the canal, but that was hard to do with the number of people running on it both ways. There were times I had to run out into the gravel to pass people. I think all the slowing down plays with your mind, too.
Mile 3 - 7:12. There was still a lot of congestion, but it started to thin out. I was beginning to feel the burn. I wondered why I don't just try to run these races for fun. I was running right by this tall guy with a blue mohawk. That helped motivate me to push it.
0.1 miles - 43 sec. Blue mohawk out kicked me. I didn't get passed a lot the whole race. That was encouraging. 178th out of 790 overall. 145th out of 444 males. 15th out of 53 in my age division. Chicked by 33 chicks. I had fun. Under ideal conditions (nocongestion) I think I would have cracked 22 minutes. Who woulda thought Oreo cookies could taste so good after a race? Sorry there weren't a lot of funny stories to tell today or any pictures. I guess I was all business.
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