My goal was to break 46 min, and I was able to do that. I ran 45:51, which is the fastest time of the year for me, but still 47 seconds off of my PR. This was a fast (totally flat) course, so it's probably a good indicator of my racing fitness right now. Here are the splits: 7:16(HR 164), 7:23(173), 7:20(173), 7:27(173), 7:33(173), 7:25(176), 1:23(179). It's hard to say how much of an improvement this race was compared to 46:14 last month because this was a faster course. I'm happy with the result, but not too happy with the way I ran the race. Contrary to the plan to start in 7:20-7:25, I found myself at the first mile marker in 7:16! I think I paid for it by not being able to speed up later. I settled into 7:20 pace on the second mile, but then all I could do was maintain the same effort, and the mile splits began to slide as I was getting more tired. I did push the last mile, but it only gave me 7:25 at that point. One thing I'm happy about compared to my 46:14 time in April is that I ran the last 0.2mi 8 seconds faster this time. I think it's because I was dueling with another woman, and we passed each other couple of times until I went into a full sprint the last 100 yards and finally passed her for good. I was wearing my Garmin for the first time in a race, and it was interesting to see HR data. My HR stayed exactly the same from miles 2-5, which confirms my feeling that I was running the same effort, but the times were getting slower as I was getting more and more tired - this seems logical to me. I would have to increase the effort (and HR of course) to even keep the same pace. I was wondering what the max HR would be, and I got 180, but I'm not sure if it's my true max HR. I need to run some 5K's and see if it goes higher at the end. Another interesting fact about this race was that it offered $20,000 in prize money, so a lot of Kenyans showed up, about 20-25 people. The winning time for men was 28:43 (Julius Kiptoo) and 32:00 for women (Ukraine's Tatyana Hladyr) - they won $2,500 each. The first Americans were John Henwood in 29:36 and Matt Downing in 29:39. It was cool to see so many Kenyans at a local race. One thing that is noticeable about them is how slowly they run on the warmup. No faster that 8-8:30 pace, it must be a real crawl for them (probably like 10:15 pace for me)! | 