Mountain States Games (ISU) 1 Mile and 3k- Taylor Farnsworth

This weekend I came up to my hometown of Pocatello, ID to run on the wooden boards of the famous Holt Arena mini dome at Idaho State University! I have good memories of racing the Simplot Games here my senior year of high school and running my first indoor mile race after my mission while at BYU. I knew the Mountain States Games would be a quality meet for me and I would have a shot at running a "post-collegiate" PR of sorts.

Besides my time-trial mile on the Runner's Corner treadmill last week (4:19), I haven't had any opportunity to do any running at that pace since my last mile race at BYU a few weeks back. Every track I run by is covered in ice and snow. So I have been settling for some strides on the dry patches of road during my mileage runs. I was a little nervous about holding that pace for a mile, but knew I had some decent strength going for me.

Being a little unsure of myself, I went out in last through the first quarter, then started working my way up. I found myself running on the outside of lane 1 most of the time trying to move up. But moving up in a race was so helpful mentally that it probably negated any cons to running a couple extra steps. My buddy Isaac Wood (current Weber State asst coach, former BYU manager) was trackside and didn't have any athletes in the race, so he got me splits and yelled encouragement. Quarter splits were 66.7 (409m), 66.4, 64.5, 60.7 (final 200 29.5) to get 4:18.6.  I felt great about closing in 2:05.2 and now I want to have a chance soon to break 2:00 for the first time in the 800m. I ended up in 2nd place, losing to Porter Reddish, a redshirt at BYU. It's the best result I could have hoped for and I'm very pleased!

Here's a little iPhone video my wife took of the last 250m or so. I'm in the white top in 3rd behind the ISU (orange) guy at the start of the clip. Obviously Porter did some work and got out way ahead early. He wasn't gonna be caught :) 

Porter and I did a nice slow 2m cooldown/warmup to decide if we felt up to doing the 3k. We decided there was no harm in at least making a workout out of it. Once again, I started out in last place and started clicking of 71s quarters. About 900m in, I passed ISU's Boyd Tucker and said something like "Let's work together". He stuck on me and having him right there really helped me to keep the pace up. I went through the mile in 4:44 and just continued w/ about 71s quarters, catching and passing a couple guys along the way, with Boyd right on my tail until the final 200m when I closed in another 29. The last 100m I saw I could just MAYBE catch Dylan Marx, so the competitive animal came out and I just barely outleaned him at the line for a finish result of 4th place in 8:49. Going into it, I wasn't sure if I'd even finish. It was really low-stress and I think that actually helped me race it pretty well. 

Track & Field is so much fun and I'm happy I got to run a little of it this winter!