I’d agreed to a bit of volunteer work for this race; that’s why I found myself down on the trail in full work gear at 5:30pm with a pair of scissors, taking down the race banner from in front of our sponsor, Milago condominiums. I’m always amazed as to what you can get away with if you act like you know what you’re doing. Still, by 6:00 I was meeting up with my lovely wife, with said banner and a bunch of other ones, to help her put them up all around the site.

The race started at 8:22, so we had plenty of time. I won’t bore you with all the details - although if you really want to know, I guess you could send me an email. We were done by 7:30, when I donned my glow in the dark vest and headed off down the course for a warmup run. They hadn’t closed the streets at this time, so I ran at the very edge and jumped into the grass as necessary. I was determined to try not to fall into my normal abysmal 5K performance, and I figured that pre-running the three miles at a 10:00 (or slower) pace was a good way to start. I was able to chat with the people at the water tables just setting up, which was pretty cool, and I kept a very keen eye out for the hills, trying to figure out the best line to take to stay flat but avoid as much unnecessary distance as I could.

One thing I discovered fairly early on was that I hated my complimentary glow in the dark green vest. It was loose, one size fits nobody, and chafed my neck as I ran; also every time my hands swept down by my sides I’d feel it catch on my watch strap. Other than that, I was feeling pretty good about the race: a mostly gentle uphill for the first half followed by a turnaround and a downhill push to the finish line. My vest I could take off, so that wasn’t a big deal. The only other issue was the weather, even as it was cooling it would still be almost 80 degrees with over 80% humidity.

Once I got back to the start I dropped my vest off at the ARC booth and headed into my drills. I was already dripping sweat and my shirt was soaked through, but hey, everyone runs in the same weather, right? We did our normal pre-run set and then I just had to stay loose for 10 minutes until start time. As I made my way into the chute I met up with Muna who was going for 23 - her PR was closer to 22 but she “wasn’t feeling it,” today. My goal was to slice a solid two minutes off my previous 24:05 PR. We jostled around a little, I saw my wife and got a good luck kiss, then the national anthem played and we headed out for good.

I must have been excited; I started my watch as soon as the horn sounded so I was showing gun time instead of chip time. Oh, well, there was only about a 4 second difference anyway. Muna sprinted out of the gate, but after the first minute or so my trusty Forerunner was showing me with a solid 6:45 pace - too fast at this stage of the game, so I regretfully backed off and let her pull ahead. She gave me a target though, and I caught up to her right around the one mile mark where I saw the clock tick over to 7:00. My goal had been to do 7:15 outbound uphill and 7:00 inbound downhill for a relatively constant effort; I was either about to have a fantastic day or regret my enthusiasm.

We stayed together for the next .7 miles (the first “half” was a little longer than the second) until the turnaround point, where I’d pulled ahead by about 6 feet. I checked to make sure that I wasn’t cutting her off and spun around the cones in the middle of the street, turning as tightly as I could without slowing down too much. There had been a band here, the only one of three that I actually heard with any clarity, and they were playing some soft ballad! Excuse me? Isn’t this a race? Anyway, as I turned around I realized that I hadn’t seen too many people in front of me, and there were a ton behind me. That’s always a good feeling.

The plan had been to pick it up at this point, but that just didn’t happen. My second mile went by in 7:22, so I knew I’d slowed down quite a bit, but I wasn’t feeling up to much of a kick when I knew I still had more than a mile to go. At this point I did spy David ahead of me; he’d passed me about a quarter mile into the race, heading out hard as always, and so I focused on trying to close the distance between us. Slowly I crept forward, picking off one person after another - one guy booked past me, but he was the only one since the beginning of the race - until I was right beside David with about a quarter mile to go. Just 400M, right? Luckily I was able to keep the pressure on and pulled ahead, beginning my kick as I saw the finish line come into view.

My third mile was right in line with my second, and my final kick wasn’t actually much of anything to write home about, only back down to my 7:00 opening pace. I had additional inspiration as well - as I was running the last mile I heard 3 or 4 people yelling, “Go Muna!” as I passed them, so I knew she was close behind me. As it turned out I was right, she finished about 3 seconds after me, right next to David. Unfortunately David had started 4 seconds behind me in the chute, so I still ended up beating my chip time by an even second, keeping his perfect record at beating me on any distance 10K and under. Next time, David, next time.

I finished up with about a mile of cooldown, a ton of water and powerade, some bananas, and finally a catered Mexican buffet (mainly quesadillas, chips, queso, and guac) with about 4 margaritas. What a wondeful way to end a race. Oh - and while I didn’t hit my 22:00 goal, I still PRd by over 90 seconds with a 22:32 time (7:15 pace). Considering the weather and the fact that I’ve been doing marathon training almost exclusively, I’m not going to complain!

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