Luke - 9.5

The Best Dam 10k, 34:13, 5th place.

Nice course along the Clackamas River. The start was downhill, which was a good way to get into a fast pace right from the gun. There were 3 guys from the Bowerman Athletic Club who looked quite fast and a decent sized group of other good runners, and a lot of fast masters. I started out in about tenth place but was in eighth I think by the first mile, which I passed in 5:33. I passed one or two guys in the second mile, and came through at 5:03, so I figured the mile marker was off. Over the next couple miles I concentrated on passing one guy, then another. Third mile was 5:27 and fourth was 5:25, which seem right. In the fifth mile there was the only real hill in the race, which takes you from the road next to the river up to the highway. It was definitely tough, and my fifth mile was 5:38. I did some quick math and figured I only needed to run 5:45 pace to break 34, which had been my goal. There was a Bowerman AC guy in front of me that I'd been trying to catch since about mile 4, and at the 5-mile mark he stopped and walked for about ten seconds, so I thought I'd be able to catch him, but when he started running again he took off from me pretty well. The last mile was downhill but I was too dead to really take advantage of it. My sixth mile split was 5:49, which was definitely wrong, and my last .2 was 1:14, so I ended up at 34:13, a PR but not sub-34 as I'd hoped. After the race Zack and I talked to a guy who said the second mile was ~20 seconds short and the sixth mile was ~20 seconds long, which sounded about right. Kind of annoying they were like that, but it wouldn't have really changed anything.

The results aren't up yet but I'm pretty sure I got 5th behind the three Bowerman AC guys and one guy that had a RunPortland jersey on who also looked semi-pro.

Afterwards got Mexican food and then drank beer all day and watched the really long Oregon game.