Life might be like a freeway sometime—although, as we all know by now, it ain’t free. Especially not toll roads.

On Sunday morning, the price of admission for running the Girls Scout 10-Miler was running into the teeth of a cold front that swept down overnight from the north. The swirling wind blew to the tune of 20 miles per hour all along the out-and-back route and made for chilling, challenging conditions on the soon-to-be opened stretch of Highway 45.

Temperatures dropped overnight and sent the 1300 or so runners digging through their closets for gloves, long-sleeves and hats for the Girls Scouts 10-Miler which was the second race of the Austin Distance Challenge series. Just getting to the race site at the new toll plaza at the north end of MoPac proved tough enough and traffic was backed up for a couple of miles.

Because so many runners were tied up in traffic, the start was delayed 20 minutes. But even that wasn’t enough for some runners who simply couldn’t get to the start on time and ended up starting late.

John Keane had no such worries. The former Golden Domer (Notre Dame, Class of ’03) started up front with his buddy Patrick Evoe and the pair dominated the 10-miler right from the gun. The first couple of miles were smack dab into the strength of the snarling wind and Evoe, who is prepping for the World Triathlon Championships, and Keane took it out relatively easy, cruising past the two-mile mark in 11:24.

"Patrick had trained like six hours yesterday so I knew he didn’t have fresh legs," said Keane, who also didn’t have fresh legs as just three weeks ago he ran 2:31:36 at the Twin Cities Marathon.

Evoe and Keane traded the lead (and blocked the wind for each other) as the course headed east over 1-35 and into Round Rock before turning around just outside Dell HQ. Coming back, the wind settled down just a bit and the two opened it up with successive 5:20 miles on the seventh and eighth miles.

But Keane had a little more gas in the tank than Evoe did and used the lone spot on the course where there was a tail wind to run his final mile in 4:47 which was enough to give him the victory in 54:06 with Evoe in second in 54:25 and Jon Fawcett third in 55:53.

"I really wasn’t sure how I’d do today," said Keane, who is in grad school at the University of Minnesota but is in town until December doing an internship at IBM. "This is such an open area and the wind was just swirling so it was hard to find a rhythm out there. But it’s nice to win. This is only the second 10-miler I’ve ever run {he ran 53:10 last year in Minneapolis}."

The other battle royale was for masters supremacy among the men. At the five-mile turnaround, there were three 40-somethings bunched--Floyd Watson, Chris Gunderson, Scott Birk—with 51-year-old Keith Dowland, fighting the wind by himself, not far behind. But Watson, 41, and Gunderson, 40, broke away from the other old guys and dueled right up until the final mile when Watson pulled away on the gentle downhill to the finish to win the division (and eighth overall) in a fine time of 57:50 with Gunderson 11 seconds back in 58:01. Birk finished third in 59:33 and Dowland, shivering in the cold, slipped all the way back to 1:01:08.

Of course, Dowland’s time was still good enough to lead all the really old guys with Jesse Conrad second. The seriously old men (55+) were led by Steve Seni in 1:06:27 and Larry Smithers in 1:07:18 with John La Claire third in 1:08:05 . The grumpy old men (60+) were paced by Gregg Evans in 1:12:08, followed by Dick Wilkowski and Pete Budde.

The women’s race wasn’t quite as tightly fought as the men’s. Sarah Shuler, a 28-year-old attorney from Austin (by way of Sacramento), led from the opening mile which she passed in 6:10. Nora Colligan, a former cross-country runner at Northwestern, made up some ground on Shuler and got within shouting distance at halfway, but was never able to get close enough to mount a charge.

"At the turnaround, I was just waiting for the tail wind to kick in but it never did," said Shuler who is training for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Phoenix Marathon in January. "I saw Nora at the turn, but never really saw her after that."

Shuler won in 1:02:44 with Colligan holding onto second in 1:03:49 with Sara Burton third in 1:04:39. First masters woman was Sheila Natho of Dallas in 1:08:47 with Lynn Doelger in second in 1:10:38 and Sally Wilging third in 1:11:37.

Next up in the Austin Distance Challenge series is the always challenging Motive Bison Stampede Half Marathon on November 12.