Salt Lake Three Fifths Marathon - Dave Taylor

Yes the course was long. Not as long as it seemed, but long. I didn't really prepare for this one, but it seemed like it might be a fun course and it was the most interesting race in April so why not? I started at a nice fast clip behind two leaders. Mike called out "go Dave", ha ha, seeing as he ended up winning it all in the marathon and passed me at .5 miles. He is getting really fast. Anyway about .2 miles in we got handed this steep uphill? Yeek! OK that was fine and then another steep uphill, twice as long this time. Arg. I still got 5:41 on the first mile but 6:27 on the second, not what I like to see at the beginning. Jason passed me at mile 1 as usual but I was feeling much better this time :) I had never been in this part of SLC so the tour was really cool - I had no idea there was an undeveloped canyon right next to downtown! I got 5:29, 5:46 and 5:31 on the next few miles, feeling great.

Then we turned the corner to South Temple, a grinding gradual uphill into the sun. Blocks are so far apart in SLC. It seemed to take forever and the 5th place Marathon guy who is 49 yrs old passed me for the last time on that hill. But it wasn't that bad, a 6:26 mile up the first bit and a 6:06 for the rest and the 9th east downhill. Then they shoved us over to 11th east.Couldn't they have waited a few more blocks? I saw the steep hill to the upper bench and thought to myself "Thank goodness that hill is far away, I wouldn't want to go up that." Well the blocks in SLC are big, so 2 of them put us halfway up it and I had to walk for just a moment. Even with that though I got 6:35. Unfortunately I saw that I wouldn't even break 1:20 at this rate, so I started to slack off. Next miles were 6:15, 6:25, 6:07, 6:31 and 6:24. What I didn't realize is that 12 of the 17 people who beat me including all three top women were less than 2 and a half minutes ahead, and if I had just kept up the mental push I could have been close to Jason. Instead I ran it like a tempo and only had a 5:46 final kick. I will do better next time.