The 9^th annual Beach to Beacon 10k was this morning, and there were some fast times posted. Tom Nyariki prevented Gilbert Okari from winning for the fourth time in a row by running over 20 seconds faster, 27:48 to 28:09. Lawrence Kiprotich was just ahead of Okari in 28:04. Donny Drake won the Maine race in 31:16 after starting back around where I was in the field. Emily Levan repeated her performance from last year, winning the women’s Maine open race and coming through about 10 seconds faster than last year in 35:40.

For myself, I have not been running more than 20 miles per week for the last few weeks due to my foot injury, but I still managed to pull a good minute off of my time from the last two years. I finished with a net time of 34:42 (gun time of 34:47), coming in 10^th of 209 men aged 25-29. I went out in a slow and easy 17:28 over the first five kilometers, and came back with negative splits. I went too slow on the downhill mile from 3.5 to 4.5 miles, but on the predominantly uphill 6^th mile I managed to come through only 3 seconds slower. I moved up quite a lot; the hill must have remembered me despite my not training on it at all this year like I have in years past.

Coming in the last half of a mile, I had a very strong finish and felt good. I beat out a few people coming to the line, and sprinted in against Harry Norton of Hanover, New Hampshire. We cross the line at the exact same time; I am waiting on the official results in the paper to see who was a tenth of a second ahead of whom. He was about 3 seconds ahead of me on the starting line, though, so my net time was a bit ahead. If he happens to read this for whatever reason, again, I’m sorry I bumped you coming over the line. It was an accident. Great finish, though. Over all, I was 64^th of 4,813 finishers.

I missed seeing my fiancé come over the line, despite making my way back to the finish line with plenty of time to spare and being there watching for her when she did actually come through. We managed to find each other a half of an hour later, though. It was very disappointing; I was hoping to cheer for her as she came across.

Dirigo had a pretty strong showing. I am going to wait until I have a paper copy of the results all on one page to see how we did as a team. Unfortunately, the Beach to Beacon only recognizes corporate teams, so we can not compete for any of the purse.

(Official: Race Results – Race Highlights)