Results here

The last time I won a race was in 1996, I was a senior in High School, running the 3,200 Meters on the track. Today, I took the victory in the 10k. Hey, you take your wins when you can get them, even if it’s a small town race, it’s pretty cool.

My time was 40:13, which is a lot slower than I was hoping for. Here are my mile splits:

1 6:08
2 6:03
3 6:02
4 6:22
5 6:36
6 6:39

The course was out and back and the first half of the race went downhill. Monument, Colorado is close to 7k feet in elevation, and the first three miles dropped 200 feet, thus the large discrepancy in splits. It was not what I would call a fast course by any means.

I felt pretty good, started off well, but pretty much ran alone the entire time. At the 1.5 mile mark, I was in fourth overall, but two of the people ahead of me were running the 5k, so they turned around. At that point a girl was leading me by about 15 seconds. She maintained that lead until the turn around point for the 10k, where there was a hill that lasted for about 1/4 mile, I passed her at about the 3.5 mile mark, making up significant ground on the uphill.

After I passed her, I kept up an ok pace, but looking at the splits I probably coasted a bit too much. My Garmin had the course at 6.37 miles, thus I am thinking it was long. Normally the Garmin is long, but not that long. The odd thing was the first mile was dead on with my Garmin, thus I thought the race course was measured using a Garmin.

The race was run on the Santa Fe Trail, which was really nice and I love not having to run on concrete or asphalt. However, the trail has a lot of loose dirt and sand, thus at times it’s hard to get a good push off with your foot, thus not a fast surface by any means but it does save the legs.

I enjoy doing small town races, I also had not been to Monument before and it’s a cool little down with some great views of the mountains and Pikes Peak to the South. They did a nice job with this race, well organized, friendly people, etc. I’ll post a review tomorrow on RunColo.