Gzhel 10km 30 Sept

I'll make this quick because I fly to the US in 3 days and am again racing this weekend before I go. I typically go to Gzhel as a final tune up pre Chicago. Well Chicago is tomorrow and I'm still in Moscow....I never expect to place top 3 in this race as lots of fast ppl almost always show up and there is one age group:20 and up! So Up I got and off I was for a tempo run to get some speed back after the marathon. The week after the marathon I didn't feel like racing. I took a rest week and slept in on Staurday instead of running the 2k in Golyanovo. My body thanked me. 

I started out as I usually do- not barn burning fast and sensible and just set myself back about 5 sec from the top girls running my own pace which was just under 4min /km. Legs still feeling kind of sleepy hmmm. It wasn't til after the first 5k I figured out I was running 4th because the 5 and 10 run together. 10 does 2 loops. First 5k pedestrian 19.53. Shoot another year I will not break 40 because I'm running this race coming off a marathon or 100k....I have a bad habit of dying in the 2nd loop here for some reason. The course is a mix of flat and rollers. Just after the 1st loop the 2nd and 3rd ladies kept looking back to see where I was. hehe...I'll just sneak up on them. So I thought...WTH- they both simultaneously cut the turn and ran through the grass and cut quite lot off the course. That pissed me off. I know these girls and would not have expected that from them. Just past the 6k they took a slight cut again. OK that's it you guys are done. I took one of them on the uphill just before 7k. I ran with the next one til just past 8k and risked opening an 8-10 sec gap. She is really good at short stuff esp middle distance. I knew she could get me at the finish and I needed a gap closer to 20 sec but only opened to about10.She did get me with 300 to go :( and I finished 3rd. My time -39.45 was still quite a bit off of where I was pre Valmiera. This course does have some rollers but they seemed manageable to me and I did most of my passing on the uphills. Top 3 get very nice prizes and they are pretty:) Gzhel is famous for the porcelain factory which makes super some of the porcelain top 3 goptpretty stuff. This yr top 10 got additional prizes-also nice:) The goal here was just to work on a steady tempo run and get my speed back. Today was a "get stuck" race which means I got stuck running one even pace. I seem to either negative split or get stuck. My shorter races tend to be get stuckers.