Claddagh pub 4m race

 I haven't done a lot of work searching for races and Dan Verrington has been doing the 3,4,5 series so I decided to join him for the 4 mile race in Lawrence.  I was hoping to give Dan a good race.  He beat me by over 1.5 minutes a few weeks back but I'm starting to feel like I'm getting back in shape.  I thought I could run around 25 flat but wasn't sure how the 155' hill from 1.5 to 2 miles was going to impact my time.

We did a 3m warm-up which got us to start of the hill and hopefully loosened us up.  11 am starts are not easy.  I had actually biked in the morn and then did a 3m run to get going.  There was then time to do 4 tax returns and clean the house before heading to the race!  Back to the race, the rain that was predicted never arrived and it was closing on 50 degrees at start time.  I did a mile in my race flats and felt ready to go.  I was a little nervous as I had not felt good since my mid-week workout.  Nearly 400 took off from downtown Lawrence.  Dan started VERY slowly but zipped by me about 200 meters into the race and immediately gapped me.  My goal was to stay as close to him as possible.  I counted 15 people in front of me as we turned off of the main drag.  I slowly reeled in people, but it felt "uncomfortable".  Dan stuck to about a 5 second lead over me.  I never heard my watch beep and the mile marks on the road were a bit off (the total distance was anywhere from 4.05 to 4.1 depending on who's watch you checked).  Splits from my watch had me hitting the half in 253 and 255 for a mile of 548.  There was a little bit of climb in then next half-mile (304 with 30' of climb) and I slowly gained on a few more and closed the gap on Dan.  I caught him on the hill and started feeling good on the climb.  I think that I'm fairly strong from all of the biking, just not running all that fast.  The 335 1/2 mile moved me up to as high as 5th place as I climbed that 110'.  Then it was back down! A 251 and 255 had me at three miles with a very flat final mile to go.  During that mile the top woman and the top 50+ went by and really started putting ground on me.  I didn't fall apart in the last mile (301 & 307) but definitely slowed a bit.  That is something I hope to improve on as I get in some more miles and some workouts.  I crossed the line in 24:43.7 for 7th place and 2nd 50+.  Dan took 10th place in 25:10.

Results