This was a great race. I felt so much better throughout the race than I did in this race last year. The temperature was cooler than last year, and I think that helped. Another nice thing about this year versus last year was that we actually stayed in Moab. Last year I couldn't get a room in Moab and so I stayed in Green River and had to get up early and drive to Moab. Today, we just had to walk about a block to get to the bus pickup. I didn't sleep great last night, but that's to be expected. But things went very smoothly this morning. It was cold at the start, but that was typical. About an half hour before race time I took my leave from my friends and took off my warm clothes and tossed my drop bag onto the truck. I ran a mile and a half warm-up at about 10:10 pace with a couple of short strides thrown in. Then I did my dynamic stretches and then lined up just a little ways behind the 8:00 pace marker. It still took quite a while to get over the start line, but once we started, I felt like I had lined up in the right place because I ran about the pace of the people around me and it seemed like the appropriate pace at that point. I don't really have a mile-by-mile breakdown. I tried not to look at my watch except for at the mile splits. I didn't look at see what my pace was while I was running, nor did I look at the total time until the end. I just knew my splits were pretty good and so I just tried to keep it up. I had a couple of slower miles where there were some hills, but I felt pretty strong on the hills. I'm not too crazy about the last couple of miles where you're out of the canyon and are running along the highway, but I just kept telling myself that I was almsot done. I felt good through out the race and didn't really struggle to keep going until the last mile. My pace and split times are from my Garmin, which shows 13.2 miles instead of 13.1, so they're a little off from what the official race results will be. AP: 7:49. Splits: 8:20, 8:05, 8:03, 7:48, 7:49, 7:45, 7:39, 7:41, 7:25, 7:58, 7:58, 7:36, 7:37, 0.20 @ 7:39. Official results are in. Chip Time: 1:43:20 Gun Time: 1:44:25 Overall place: 446 out of 3282
Sex place: 116 out of 1942
Division place: 15 out of 221
Here's a photo of the 4 of us (Michelle, Michelle, me, and Carly) right after the race. 
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