Aarhus Recap

Right when I woke up in the morning I felt good and was confident I would run well that evening.  By the time we started the race there was a light rain and slight wind and about 15C.  Compared to my last 5000m in NYC I was very content with the weather.  By 200m into the race the top 5 runners were actually lined up by PB’s, Ahmed (13:09pb), Sultan (13:09pb), Monder (13:15pb), myself and Paul Morrison.  We went through in 63, then 2:07 and 2:38 for the first km.  Before the first KM mark Monder Rizki fell off the pace and I went around him and got right behind the Qatari.  Around a lap later the Qatari dropped off the pace and I went around him a little too late.  There was a gap to the Morrocan and rabbit, BIG mistake.  I was trying to catch back up and I wasn’t really making inroads, but I was at least keeping the same pace.  Then the Qatari went back around me so I figured he wanted to get back up with the leader, but instead he just slowed it down.  Paul went around him fairly quickly as I said out loud, “this is slow”.  It was slow, we threw in a 66 to go from 4:14 (1600m) to 5:20 (2km).  The Qatari fell off of us really fast and it was just Paul and I.  I did most of the leading and we (Paul and I) went through 3km in 8:04, about four seconds behind the leader.  Paul actually apologized during the race that he wasn’t able to lead as he was just hanging on. Then I continued to lead a really slow KM (2:47) and we split 10:51 at 4km.  Paul did the math and realized we needed a 2:36 last KM to get the 13:28 b standard and made a strong move past me.  I passed him back with just under a lap to go and I ran a 60. to cross the line in 13:29.94, six seconds behind the winner and just over 1 second ahead of Paul.

I’m happy with that result as thats the first time this season I’ve been in that zone and it is my second fastest 5000m ever.  A little disspointed that I missed the B standard by less than 2 seconds, oh well.  The other good thing is that I feel with a better field I could have held onto a faster pace for much of the middle of the race when I was leading lap after lap.  I should get better competition in Heusden.