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Papa John's 10 Miler

Hey blogosphere,

It's been a while. My bad.

So last weekend I went down to Louisville for the Papa John's 10 Miler. There was also some basketball game going on later that day? Something about the Final Four and teams from Kentucky or something? Yeah the atmosphere was definitely crazy with a Louisville vs. UK showdown.

Anyway, about the race: I ran 52:05 (about 5:12 pace) and got fifth (and 100 bucks!).

5th, behind 3 Africans and an Olympic Marathon Trials qualifier.

And $100? Yeah I'll take it.

So even though my pace was basically the same as 2 weeks ago (on a much flatter course), I was a lot happier with the race this time around.

5:12s felt a lot more comfortable this time around. Especially over the last 4 miles, I felt like I was able to finish much stronger than two weeks ago. I wasn't struggling just to finish; I was ratcheting the pace down trying to reel in 4th place. In fact, I felt like I could have kept going at that pace for at least 3 more miles.

So I'm taking all of that to mean that I'm in pretty good aerobic shape. Which is a good thing, since the marathon is a wholly aerobic race. I'm just not in fast VO2max shape. Which I haven't done much work on, since the marathon isn't much of a VO2max race.

All things considered, I'm a lot more pleased with this race than I was with the Heart Mini. Now it's just one more month (one month!?) til the Pig.

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