Top of Utah Marathon. 2:39:22. This was the 4th race of the Grand Slam circuit, and I had St. George in two weeks, so the goal of this race was to run fast enough to get my confidence up, but slow and even enough to make a fast recovery and race my best in two weeks. In other words, don't leave it all on the road in this race. Conditions were cool and a little rainy at first, then cool and sunny by the end. The wind and rain was a problem during the first 10 miles of the race, and it really threw me out of rhythm. I let the pack go from the beginning and just focused on running my own pace. I started out with 6:00/miles, but slowed with the weather conditions. Plus, the rain made me have to urinate, and I had to make several stops just in the first 10 miles. In addition, my lower back was tight and giving me problems. So things werre not going well, but I was still thinking more about St. George and wasn't too concerned. After my first pee stop (Mile 5), and runner named Jeff caught me, and we talked and decided to trade off taking the wind each mile. This worked out really well for both of us, and I had someone to pace with and talk to through the canyon. We held steady 6:15-6:20 miles through Mile 12, and I had recovered from my erratic start, plus my back was loosening up, and I was getting inspired to run fast. I started picking it up a little and went through the half in 1:21:50. At that point I got really inspired and decided that I wanted to try to negative split and break 2:40, and hit my St. George pace for a few miles in the process. My legs agreed. I cranked it up to sub-6:00 pace until Mile 22, and held a pace slightly over 6:00 into the finish. I came up on Sasha with 1.5 miles to go, but could not catch him. He ended up beating me by 11-12 seconds. Second half split was 1:17:32, so a 4:18 negative split. Confidence is high into St. George. Mile Splits/Ave HR 5:59/149 - nice easy start 5:59/161 5:56/161 6:05/159 - wind and rain picks up. Not feeling great 6:40/159 - pee stop 6:17/160 - running with Jeff now 6:19/162 6:18/156 - good steady rhythm, HR dropping 6:15/156 6:37/152 - 2nd pee stop, caught back up to Jeff afterward, so not much lost time 6:16/157 - HR still very low 6:18/160 6:01/165 - picked it up here, left Jeff 5:51/170 - now inspired to run fast 5:43/175 - my goal St. George pace 5:40/179 - out of the canyon but still increasing speed. This is good 5:47/179 5:45/181 5:57/184 - getting a little tired, but no wall 6:04/184 - uphill out of Millville 5:52/182 - downhill into Providence 6:14/181 6:05/186 -- pass Demetrio Jr. 6:00/187 -- see Sasha, can I catch him? 6:00/188 -- closing slowly on Sasha 6:05/192 - still closing on Sasha, but not fast enough 1:15/194 - couldn't get him | 