The heat index was 111 in the late afternoon on Thursday, but that was probably down to about 100 by race time at 6:30 p.m. Even still, pretty brutal racing conditions. I warmed up for about 10:00 with a few strides and form drills—an abbreviated pre-race routine given the heat. Weeks ago, I had planned on taking the race out pretty hard. Based on the recent Elmhurst 4 on the 4th race, I figured I could run around 15:00 or so for 5k right now. I assumed that would win, so I wanted to just run hard wire to wire. However, with the heat, I had changed my plan to just hang with the leaders until a half mile to go. I don't really know why, but when the gun went off, I just abandoned this new plan and reverted to running hard from the start. This wasn't too bright.
I opened up a decent gap right from the start and cruised through the first mile in 4:47. This actually felt pretty good, but I could tell I wouldn't be able to maintain that pace in the heat. Sure enough, I rolled through two miles in 9:50 (a 5:03 second mile) and was hurting pretty bad by this point. The last mile actually has a couple of little uphills and I slowed down significantly. There's no third mile split, but my final time was about 15:47 (unofficial). So I was probably at 15:10 or just under at the third mile, meaning that split was close to a 5:20. It was an unpleasant way to race.
The unofficial results, as near as we could tell, were as follows:
- 1st - Matt Flaherty, 15:47
- Won in 2009 and 2010, attorney at Winston & Strawn
- 2nd - Derek Holland, 16:32
- Won in 2007, attorney at Bryan Cave
- 3rd - Dave Strubbe, 16:40
- Won in 2008, attorney at Williams, Bax & Saltzman
- 4th - Brent Chatham, (time?)
- Summer associate at Leydig, Voit & Mayer and rising 3L at University of Chicago Law School
- 5th - Chris Wehrman, (time?)
- Won in 2006, the first year (I think) of the Race Judicata
