Race Report: Pike's Peak Road Runners Winter Series II

Pike's Peak Road Runners Winter Series II, Colorado Springs, CO - 01/28/12
I decided it has been long enough since I last raced, so about 10pm on Friday night I got on the internet to look for races in Colorado Springs. I saw the PPRR were having their second series race on Saturday and assumed several of my friends would be there. There were two races on Saturday: 4 mile and 8 mile. During warm-up I chose to run the 8 mile. I did my standard 4 mile warm-up and afterwards found out the races had two different start times. I had an extra 15 minutes, so I ran another mile.
My plan for the race was to go out conservatively, get into a nice hard tempo pace, and negative split the out and back course. I didn't care if I finished 9th, 60th, or 3rd place. The gun went off and I was quickly in the lead pack. Ryan Hafer started to gap us so I surged a little to put myself in second and stay with him. Mistake. I went through 1 mile in 5:10, which is 16:01 pace for a 5k. There was no way I was planning on running 16 flat 5k pace for 8 miles. I immediately slowed down and went through 3 miles at a more reasonable 16:51. At 4 miles and the turnaround I was a least one minute behind Hafer, and assumed I had a minute on anyone behind me. Wrong. The next two guys were less than 30 (maybe 15) seconds behind me at the turn. I knew I couldn't negative split after the 5:10 opening mile, but I still wanted to run in hard. Miles 5-7 were 11:38, a little faster than the 11:41 on the way out, and the last mile was 5:42. i finished 8 miles in 45:42, good for second place. I was cool with my time; sub 46 was where I wanted to be for a tempo run/workout. Hafer and I ran a few miles together for cool-down and that was it!