I woke up to the sound of booming thunder and hear the rain pouring down at like 4:30 am and I thought we were in for a soaking wet half marathon. Luckily the weather cleared up and it was a pretty good temperature to run in, although a bit humid.
I met Ben early to warm up and we ran into Albert, so the three of us warmed up together. Luckily we found a secret bathroom, because they had only two porta potties for the entire race.
We knew early on it was going to be a deep field with Ben, Ken, Jake, Bret Hales, Nate Hornock, and me. And if any of us had a bad day Albert would be there to reel us in. The race started a tad late (due to the lack of porta potties and long lines). We had a group of seven for the first mile after which Albert backed off. The group stayed together for mile two as well with some conversation here and there. But at mile three Ben got things moving when he moved up front and dropped the pace. We still stayed together as a group but the conversations were over. By mile four things started to string out a bit. Brett got a tiny gap on us. I was in second and Jake was just a few steps back in third.
By mile 6 Brett had a 16 second gap and we were running South into a pretty decent headwind. Jake got alongside me for a bit and I jokingly said it was easy to tell who hadn't raced last week (referring to Brett taking it to us).
Jake then settled a few steps back again and stayed there for a bit. Our gap on the next group (Nate, Ben, and Ken) was pretty good and Brett was still pulling away, so it was basically Jake and me running for second.
Around 9.75 or so Jake decided to break me and picked up the pace. At first I thought I had slowed, but my pace hadn't he just picked it up. I didn't really have much left in the tank and kind of just watched him pull away. He got a really good gap on me and then just maintained it the rest of the way, beating me by 31 seconds or so. My final time was 1:10:43, which meets my goal for the race.
Garmin Splits: 5:26 5:16 5:09 5:19 5:19 5:22 5:27 5:27 5:21 5:28 5:24 5:21 5:20 and 1:01 for final .19 or (5:15 pace)
Afterward I was drenched from the humidity and went to change my clothes and realized I'd locked my key inthe car :(
After an unsuccessful attempt by a police officer to get it open my Dad offered to drive up on his motorcylce and bring my wife's keys to me. Very nice of him. It was fun hanging out after with everyone.
I hit my new weekly mileage PR at 78...I'm getting there. I will do a cut week next week and then hit the mileage hard again for a couple weeks heading into St. George. | 
