The answer seems to be no.

I ended up winning the woodlands 5 miler today. My final time was 24:50 but that really doesn’t tell the story. Before I get into how it went, congrats to my buddy Andy Stover who got 5th and would have PR’d if the course was accurate…

Anyways we took off pretty conservatively the first mile. It was a small pack of maybe 5 or so guys through the mile. We crossed at 4:50 (the mile mark was right at the top of a freeway overamp, so thus it was a little slower than the pace we were running on the flat ground.) After that we went down the ramp and me and DBU coach Jacob Phillips ran side by side controlling the pace with Adam Davis tucked in right behind. We crossed two miles at 9:32ish. The cold felt kind of weird to run fast in and it took me until about here until my legs started feeling good. From the 2mi mark to the 3mi mark we were moving pretty dang good through these neighborhoods. At 3mi I was roughly 14:14. At this point Adam was running right off my shoulder and Jacob started to fall back a bit. Me and Adam ran together until 3.5mi or so and I opened a bit of daylight. I tried to keep a smooth steady pace through 4 miles and then pick it up. THe four mile split was weird as I crossed at 19:19. That’s when I started to know something was up because I knew I hadn’t slowed down that much or at all. Anyways I decided to keep it steady until we went over the freeway and use the down side to hammer in, since it was about 1200m from the finish. Well I did that and started taking off and really moving for about 3 minutes until I looked down at my watch and started thinking where in the heck is the stupid finish. I almost took a wrong turn but then cruised in to the finish to win in 24:50. So ya, a 5:30 last mile split… adam took 2nd in around 25:05 and Jacob ran around 25:20 for 3rd. Jason Schweitzer (ran for Tulsa) got 4th and Andy got 5th.

So pretty weird race, but it felt good. Just wish it would have been accurately measured. One of my friends said he wheeled it a couple years back and it was around 250 long. Another guy said his GPS got it .17 long (ya I know GPS isn’t the most accurate thing). But whatever, it was a solid race. Felt good and it felt pretty smooth to make a move and carry it for a while.

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    1 Comment

    1. WalkSports.com on November 23, 2006 at 9:51 pm

      Steve,

      I’m not a big fan of the GPS, but I’m aware of three knowledgeable runners (who know how to run a certified road course) who had 5.18, 5.19 and 5.2 miles on their respective GPS devices.

      The individual with 5.18 on hers has done Couer d’Alene Ironman the last two years.

      Nonetheless, congratulations on the effort today.

      Jon

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