Saturday - Briefly!

First of all, please check out our new Houston Running Bloggers splash page! Many thanks to Edwin Quarles' wife, Donna, and Sarah Graybeal's creative brilliance!

Congratulations are also in order to our own Jessica Alexander, who not only finished the 3rd leg in the 5-race HEB Texas 10K Challenge by running in the Dublin Dr. Pepper 10K today but also took third in her 21-25 age group with a time of 51:15.0.

I ran in the Sound to Narrows 12K in Tacoma, Washington. I covered the hilly 7.46-mile course in 1:18:00.96 - about three minutes off of my goal; however, even the top runners indicated that this 12K is much, much harder than the insanely popular Bloomsday Run 12K in Spokane that was held last month.

Here are comments from the Tacoma News Tribune's Saturday, June 10th preview story:

New Balance, one of the race’s sponsors, is bringing in one of its elite runners. Matt Downin, a 29-year-old resident of Westwood, N.J., was a two-time Big Ten cross country champion at Wisconsin and finished 16th in the New York City Marathon last year.
However, Tollefson, a world-class runner in his own right, has home advantage on what many consider one of the country’s most challenging 12K courses.
“People used to look at the Sound to Narrows result and think we were all slow runners out here,” said Sam Ring, winner of the first race in 1973 and an every-year participant. “Then they come here and run it and realize how tough it is.”
Downin is familiar with the course’s reputation.
“I’m looking at the elevation chart and I see a lot of ups and downs,” Downin said. “It looks like a difficult course.”
Last month in Spokane, Downin ran a flatter 12K, Bloomsday, in 35 minutes, 52 seconds and finished 10th. Tollefson didn’t run Bloomsday last month, but finished 21st in 2005 with a time of 38:08.

(For comparison's sake, Sean Wade ran 37:45 at Bloomsday to win the Master's division.)

The elevation chart? Check it out here! The Blue Bell Fun Run 10K course is a walk in the park compared to this and is tougher than the Austin American-Statesman Capitol 10K course in Austin.

Here my splits (not pretty, but compare them to the elevation chart):

Mile 1 -- 8:51.49
Mile 2 -- 9:51.31 (some uphill)
Mile 3 -- 10:57.84 (mostly uphill about the last 3/4 of the mile)
Mile 4 -- 10:05.66 (was still under 10 min/mile)
Mile 5 -- 11:05.37 (slipped to a 10:12/pace here)
Mile 6/7 -- 22:17.56 (10:24/pace at about 6; some uphill, big downhill, big uphill then a turn and back the same way I did the 8.51 in)
Last .46 -- 4:51.73

I'm off to Port Angeles, Washington early in the morning to run in the North Olympic Discovery Half Marathon. It will be my 12th state to run a half marathon after today it became the 19th state that I ran an event in.