Sundodger XC meet (8 km)

This race hurt and hurt a lot. I forgot what running a xc race full tilt felt like. My teammate, Mark Davies, picked me to carpool and we arrived at the course in the middle of the men's "Open" race. This was the race for junior colleges, small colleges, and extra runners not running in the "Invite" race. Watching them made me think I should be in that race. A lot of them would have still crushed me, but I would have been more in the "pack" I think. Watching the top teams warm up for the Invite race made me a little nervous: "can I beat any of these guys? Even their 7th runners?"
I thought my odds were good of beating SOMEONE, but again was a little nervous as the gun went off and the entire field took off. I was in the back of the pack. I went through the 1km in 3:07 and then the mile in 4:54. Yikes, I was hoping to average 5:20-5:30 for the race so sub-5 could mean a lot of suffering down the trail for Jake. But I didn't have much choice: I was only ahead of 3 guys at the mile mark.
Luckily this pace was too fast for a few others also and the pack started to string out and I started to pull ahead of a few guys. I was close to Mark Davies at this point and I thought I would end up running with him but he began to ease away- or I began to slowly fade more likely-- and I began to focus on runners from Gonzaga and Western Washington. I battled with their 6th and 7th runners through the middle of the race but lost contact with a few of them and was left with one guy to focus on. With about 2km left to go on a long uphill stretch I was able to pull away from him and started to make a little ground on the next two guys ahead. But the course turned down for an equally long down hill and I couldn't make up any more ground on them. We ran that long up hill one more time on the way to the finish I was able to make up a few more seconds on them but not enough to kick with them. At the 7km mark the course winds fairly close the finish and I could hear the roar of the crowd for the top runners. This meant not many spectators for me as they hurried to see the winners battle it out. I went through 7km in 24:07, and all alone. The guy I pulled away from was still pretty far back and I didn't have enough room to catch the two in front of me. This is probably a good thing since I was nauseous from about 1/2 way so having a big, full-sprint kick with other guys would have guaranteed breakfast coming back up.
My final time was 27:29 I believe. This is a 5:37/mile average. Not great but its a starting point. My average HR was 168 so I know I was pushing pretty damn hard. I just need to get faster is all! Next race is in two weeks here in Seattle, at a much tougher course than today. It will be another good test and another great workout to help me get faster.