From Dylan’s blog
I lined up on Sunday in Tempe for my first race in a long time. I was excited to go out and see where my fitness was at after 8 solid weeks of training from mid November til now.
It was a lonely, but solid effort as I ended up winning the race in 1:02:39, with second place almost 6 minutes behind. Going into the event I wasn’t aware of who my competition might be on race day. It turns out it was a race against the clock. I set out at a pace that I felt was aggressive, yet reasonable. I went through the first mile in 4:49. I never looked back but didn’t hear any foot steps behind me so figured I’d just put the head down and try to keep an eye on my mile splits. I was able to maintain between 4:45-4:50 for the first 10 miles. The pace wasn’t super comfortable. I definitely had to stay focused and keep pushing. But, I was able to keep things going. From ~5-9.5 miles the course gained about ~130ft in elevation. I definitely felt that gradual incline. But, it was accompanied by a nice downhill section from 9.5-12 miles. I split a couple 4:38-4:40 miles during that section and tried to run really hard the last mile as I knew I was on for a good time. Turns out I only managed a 4:55 from 12-13miles. Despite that little blip I was happy with the result.
