2022-10-02 at 7:00am
13.13 miles (07:15/mile)
Hillsborough, North Carolina

Shout out to Martin Wileman for keeping the HHH on-track this year! The weather was great, the road and trail conditions were good, support and cheering were stellar, and the course was…as always…challenging.

Official time (gun start) was 01:34:40.45. Pace was 7:14, according to timing. Ran past the finish to round out the distance for Strava.

Overall, felt fantastic throughout the course. Started too fast, but my body told me when to slow down. It went something like, “Hey, you’re keeping the fast kids in sight….are you *sure* you want to do that?” Thanks Joshua Lowry! Glad that I listened, as I had energy to take advantage of the road back from the turnaround.

Interesting experience. In years past, during the race, I was rarely close to anyone and ran most of the distance alone. During this race, I was either sandwiched between folks, or being pushed by Gabriel Milla (grin). There were a ton of strong runners out there. Definitely want to mention Tyler Greene, Dan Hirschman, James Fox, Kenton Stamey, and Dave Sroka…all were phenomenal runners and fun people with which to share the day.

Managed to even out the pace (for the most part) throughout the route. After review, was around thirty seconds per mile variance in pacing…not the best ever, but a marked improvement for me. Similar to what Taylor Libby said regarding her race today (and noting it for Laura Maile), I’m pretty durn pleased by the pacing and execution. Could I have run faster? Possibly. Did I run *my* race? Definitely.

As a training run, it checked all of the marks (grin). As a shared experience, it exceeded expectations.