DH Jones 10 Miler

2/23 - Today was the DH Jones 10m in Amherst MA, we met at Fleet Feet Albany at 7:20 to make the drive down. We arrived around 9:40am relaxed and caught up with a few people before heading out for a warm-up at 10:20am. The warm up was very relaxing and full of joking around, I did notice some funny looks from others around us. Once we got back to the gym I got changed up and headed out to the starting line, I tucked into the 3rd row and awaited the start of the race. Right off the start I latched on to my teammate Megan and rolled thru the first couple miles with her, I decided prior to the race that I would wear a watch but not bother with splits and just see what happened. This worked out well as we cruised thru the opening miles, around 3-3.5 I fell off the group during the climbing. I checked my time at 4m (23:xx) once we hit the dirt road it was a mix of mud and ice, I was able to lock in with a group and roll thru this section hitting the half way point in (28:52). Over the next few miles I locked in with a runner from greater Lowell and kept pushing together the rest of the race, on a few of the turns I was able to check back and see where Pete (teammate) was and how close he was. Pete has (1:50 - 800m speed) with all the downhill I was running a bit scared that he would roll-up on me. I came thru 8m (45:02) and knew I was going to have a good day, we hit the final hills coming in and continued to press to get thru them as quickly as possible. With the change in the course we made a left hand turn at the 9m mark, I felt my legs starting to hurt and tighten up. Again the runner from Lowell gave me a boost by taking the lead again to help us close the gap, I checked the watch as I knew we were close and figured we had at most 1/2mile left and started to change gears to get close to the finish. As we turned into the parking lot I wasn't sure when to start a full sprint, I decided to wait until I could hear Eric as soon as that happened I was able to close up pretty quick. Finished up with a time of (57:44 63rd overall)

Finally a good race, it was like a weight lifted.

Coming into the finish 

Final Push