Side ache doesn't slow Kimeli in 10K

Richard Kimeli was the first to cross the finish line for the win in the Deseret Morning News/KJZZ TV men's 10K race, but according to him, his time of 28:45 was still a little disappointing.

"I wanted to make a better run, but at about the four- or five-mile mark I started to get a little stitch in my side," said Kimeli. "I thought that this might be a course where I could run a 27:40 or so, but with the pain, I just wasn't able to get that little extra bit I needed to go that fast."

Kimeli is 27 and hails from Iten, Keiyo District of the Rift Valley Province, Kenya. His personal best of 28:11 wasn't meant to be broken under the near 80-degree temperatures and muggy conditions. It also may have helped top the mark if the 10K specialist had someone to push him along the way.

"There were three of us that broke away right from the gun," he said. "After less than a mile, it was just me and one other guy, and at about a mile and half, I made a move and just had to push myself alone from there. I thought I had a pretty good pace, but I know that I can go faster. I have a race of under 28 minutes in me, I just know it."

Kimeli's pursuit of the sub-28-minute race is ongoing as he runs for the AmeriKenyan Racing Club. He said that it will be only a matter of days until he feels good enough to run that time and he makes the circuit around the country racing in mostly 10K events.

Teren Jameson of Taylorsville was the other competitor that hung with Kimeli for the first of the race, but it was evident early on to the former University of Utah runner that it was not going to be a win.

"I kept with him (Kimeli) for the first mile or mile and half, but then he had a little surge, and I just watched him slowly pull away," said Jameson. "I could see him almost the whole time, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to make a move to catch him. I just focused in on running my own race at that point."

The fact that Jameson finished second with a time of 29:10 was even a bit surprising to himself considering the 10K is not something he is focusing on right now. He is currently training for the U.S. Marathon Trials in November and said that perhaps he could have won the race had he not been working so hard for that goal.

"I felt pretty good, but my legs got a little heavy from training so hard the last couple of weeks," he said. "I probably could have gone a little faster if I had given myself a little more down time first to recover. But that's OK with me. I was happy with how I ran considering that I have my focus somewhere else right now."

Jameson said that he enjoys running a 10K because of the