One of my favorite ½ marathons in Colorado has to be the Steamboat Springs ½ Marathon.  It’s a great little town about 3 hours northwest of Denver and well worth the drive.  This past Sunday was my 3^rd trip up here for the run and I was hoping to have a good race.  It’s a point to point run and all 1000 competitors are shuttled out 13.1 miles.  You run to town while surrounded by snow capped mountains and green rolling farmlands.  It’s one of the prettiest and scenic courses that I know of, but it’s hard to enjoy the scenery when you’re racing.  I won this race in 2006 and was 2^nd in 2007, so I was hoping to do well this year.  As the gun went off I just focused on my own pace and immediately settled into a good rhythm around 5:50 pace.  Right away there were three of us in the lead.  By mile 4, one of the guys pulled ahead and was leading about 1 minute up.  I could tell he wasn’t completely running away from me so I knew that I could catch up.  At mile 6, I pushed to catch him and we soon found ourselves running together.  As we started to go up one of the final hills, I pushed to create a gap ahead of him and it worked.  I pulled away and saw that he had dropped back considerably.  At 3 miles to go I just kept pushing to hold the lead.  I soon saw the finish line and I broke the tape 1^st overall in 1:16.57 and 50 seconds ahead of 2nd place, a new personal best for me in an open ½ marathon. 

Soon after I finished, I immediately took over all babysitting duties while Nikki went on a 2 hour trail run.  All in all it was a great day and I was so happy to achieve my goals and a new PR!

A huge thanks to our teams clothing sponsor Zorrel for a great running top (www.zorrel.com) , and to Profile Design for the best running shorts I have ever run in (www.profile-design.com).  Also, thanks to Saucony for a great pair of Saucony Fastwitch racing flats (www.saucony.com).  All are superb products!

Thanks for reading!

Tim