The hills and humidity did their best Sunday morning to put a damper on the 40th Abe’s Amble 10K at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. But former Southern Indiana University teammates Tyler Pence and Julia Kohnen were able to scale those hills and rip through the heavy air better than everybody else.
The 24-year-old Pence won his second straight Abe’s title in a tick over 32 minutes.
Pence, a two-time NCAA Division II track champion and seven-time All-American while at Southern Indiana, beat runner-up and 10-time champion Bryan Glass by 2:37, almost a half-mile.
Pence, assistant cross country coach at the University of Illinois Springfield, is training for two half-marathons in St. Louis in October and then the Las Vegas Rock and Roll Marathon in November. He’s got his sights set on qualifying for the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials.
A sub-1:04 in the half-marathon will do the trick as will a time of 2:19 in the marathon.
“Today I came out to do the 10K at half-marathon pace,” said Pence, who is sponsored by First to the Finish and Rino Works gym. “So the pace I ran today is what my goal pace will be.
“Actually I hoped to run faster than this. It’s good to kind of get used to running that pace.”
This article appeared online for The State Journal-Register on August 20, 2017.
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