I didn't know much about this race, except it takes place entirely in Centennial Park. That meant it would be almost completely flat, most likely with a ton of turns. Right after Tom King, my training took a pretty big nose dive and I was having trouble running anything much faster than 5:40 pace. I thought that my iron could be getting low again, so I doubled on my dosage for a while and was hoping for a good time to get my head on a little more straight.
I wasn't sure who would show up but my goal was to take out the race in around 4:50 for the first mile and see if I could run under 15:20. When I checked the weather that morning, it showed that some strong rain and wind was coming in, along with some chilly temperatures. I felt really good on my warm-up and was feeling optimistic about my chances.
When the gun went off, I took a couple of hundred meters to find my rhythm. I felt like I was moving pretty quickly and was alone out front. I felt like I was going to make a run at a sub 4:50 first mile and I was surprised when I hit 4:54. It felt much faster than my 4:57 at Tom King, so I was a little frustrated. I tried to grit down and push some more and felt like I was still around 5:00 pace.
There was a confusing part in the second mile and one of the monitors let me know I missed a turn. I got back on course but lost around 20 seconds or so with the confusion and having to run back on course. At this time, I knew my shot at a decent time was out the window, so I decided to just run a steady effort and not kill myself. I hit two miles in 10:22, which gave me a 5:28 second mile and I kept a solid effort to finish in 16:08 to win by a little over a minute.
I was happy to win the course but was hoping to run a faster time to give me some more confidence, especially since the Country Music Marathon is about a month away. Oh well, back to the grind.
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