The race temperature was pretty good. It was nice and cool, but there wasn't any wind. I was very pleased with that. Before the race I talked to Tim (who wasn't running) about what I should do about the competition running 5:25 pace. I didn't know if I should let him go and hope he'd come back or to go out with him and out-last him. I decided to go with him.
When the race started, he jumped right to the front. Another kid, I think one of the Kramers, went out way ahead of everyone. I think we passed him by the library, if not sooner. I was just running right beside Jeff, if not right behind him for the first mile. It felt pretty easy to start out with a 5:30. After mile 1, I literally tucked in right behind him. He did a great job of running a fairly consistent pace, right around 5:35, almost the whole time. However it wasn't 5:25 pace, and it felt really easy. I was just cruising right behind him. I passed Kendall going the other way getting back onto Kenmore and gave her a thumbs up to let her know things were in the bag.
We got off of the canal path and the pace really started to dwindle for a bit. I felt like we were talking, and it turned out to be the slowest mile by 9 seconds, 5:47. I listened to him and could hear that he was breathing really hard. A good sign. I waited another mile to see what was going on and we got right back down to pace. I decided I wanted to go sooner than later so he couldn't get any benefit from the crowd to boost him up when we got back towards Kenmore. So when we got back onto Canal Street, I went. He responded, I pushed a little bit harder, and he didn't come with me. I went back to that same pace after about a quarter mile when I figured he was way behind. My 8th mile was 5:25, so I slowed down a bit to 5:30 for the last mile. I had a good kick and ended up winning by 40 seconds running 52-flat. Last year I ran 52:33.
I wasn't too worried about the time, all I wanted to do was win and do it easily. Missions accomplished.
I hung out a long time after the race while KC was still working. I had a bunch of beers at the post-race party, unloaded a few old Grand Prix prizes, and got a $30 gift card for my efforts. KC will have made a whole lot more money than I did once her check comes in the mail.
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