Today was the Provo City Half Marathon. I just decided to run this race this past monday. I saw the results this past year and so I was hoping I could run a 1:10 and still make some money.
As I got to the start of the race I met up with Mike and Matt Poulsen and we went on a 2 mile warm-up. As I was talking with them they mentioned to me that they showed up and they thought they could run easy and win money as well. It now seems that if there was a race the previous year that was slow, this year will be the opposite. Every race this year will be fast, everyone in Utah is getting faster there is not such thing as chilling in a race to make money anymore.
At the start I saw about 5 or 6 guys that could win the race, that made me nervous and I knew at that moment I was going to have to run a really solid race to place in the top 3. The reason this made my so nervous was because I just ran the Boston Marathon less than 2 weeks ago and I did not know how well my legs would hold up.
When the race started it was straight downhill pretty steep. I felt really good for the first 5 or 6 miles and then it got much harder. It was downhill and flat up until about 7 and then it became flat for the next 3 miles. Mile 10 had a slight uphill and then it was flat for a mile and half, then a slight downhill for the last little bit. I was in third up until about mile 7 when fritz came up. He passed me and I knew I had to hold on and not give up. I was fading but when I saw my wife about mile 9 I took my gel and felt way better and got a second wind. I caught up to Fritz and then we pretty much were side by side until mile 12 then I slowly started to pick it up and ended up running a 1:07:24. My second fastest Half of my life and that was only off one speed workout since the Boston Marathon 12 days ago. Bret Hales won with a 1:05:30 and Nate who trains with Fritz and Jake took second with a 1:07:03. 1 mile cool down with Bret Hales.
This race gave me confidence that by the end of this year I should be breaking 1:06 or getting close.
My splits were 5:07, 4:55, 5:04, 5:04, 5:02, 5:06, 5:15, 5:12, 5:12, 5:17, 5:19, 5:13, 5:05 and 4:37 last little bit.
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