Everything about this race was kind of surreal. I spoiled it by running Des News on Wednesday and I had no idea what to do with myself. I recovered well from Des News but I didn't want to push my luck. James - runmehappy - was hoping for some pacing help so I decided it would be a good idea to run some goal marathon pace and see how it felt. I just had to convince him to go out that fast. With 1400 feet of drop in the first 8 and only 90 in the last 5.1, this is set up to blaze down the canyon. So the deal was 6:05-6:10 for the first 8 and then every man for himself. We met John Hille from the blog at the start and he was shooting for something in the 1:20-1:25 range and decided to join our little pace group. Unfortunately, I left my Garmin at my friend's house in Orem so I had to use runkeeper which is somewhat inaccurate - and with the canyons, even more so. We avoided going out too fast and kept the miles pretty steady. I think we were averaging about 6:07-6:08 after exiting the canyon, hitting mile 8 on the parkway. I did mile 9 in 5:50 or so and then decided to ease off because I didn't want to go hard enough to require any recovery. I ended up averaging 6:09 for the run and feeling strong and fresh at the end. Encouraging to feel that good at goal marathon pace. Big congratulations to James and John on their PRs today. The race was well organized until the last few miles. A runner turned left at a crosswalk and I followed him but the cop said "He's the only guy who's turned left." So I turned back after a small deviation and the other guy did after a bit longer of a deviation. I let him catch up to me and I just followed him in. At the Alpine Highway, there was no one and no sign telling us to go under the highway so we went above it. On the cool down, we saw hundreds of runners doing the same with traffic stalled and everyone confused. Apparently the guy that was supposed to direct the runners didn't show up and they didn't post any signs to tell us where to go. Then the awards ceremony was excruciating. I usually don't stick around for these, but they were giving out some stuff. It took a good 45 minutes to get to the male 35-39 category with a slow delivery and numerous interruptions. Also, I did none of my usual pre-race routine. I ate indian food and chicken wings the night before and didn't go sleep until 11. I got a banana, cliff bar and rockstar java (b/c there was no hot coffee) at the convenience store across from Lone Peak and didn't finish eating until later than usual. Luckily no GI issues though. A nice down week of just over 60 miles for me. Time to get back to the grind.
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