Another big reason I wanted to start a blog was to write up recaps of races. Again, I always love reading these on other people's blogs, and I tend to forget race details almost immediately so I think it will be fun to come back and read these later. I've never written anything like this before, so we'll see.
As I mentioned last week, I was hoping to take a crack at my 10-year-old 10k PR of 39:35, and possibly even run under 39 minutes. I was feeling pretty tired from a long week of training, and a little sick to my stomach on Sunday morning so I wasn't too optimistic, but I know that the race energy can work magic. The weather was pretty perfect too, warm and not windy. Lots of my buddies were running this race, and quite a few of them had done 10 miles by the time the race started in order to get their miles in for the day. This is insane to me, although I did need to get in 18 miles for the day so I was planning a really long cool-down to make it happen, which may also be insane.
I did a 4 mile warm-up and a little stretching and striding. It's so fun now that I've met so many Tucson runners, to see everyone warming up and getting ready. We all agreed that we were DEFINITELY not going to go out too fast, and I know that for me and probably a few others, that plan immediately flew out the window. The race started about 10 minutes after 9 a.m.
Mile 1 -- 6:09: Maybe someday I'll be able to not go out too fast, but not today apparently. I was looking at my watch so much and trying to slow it down, but it's just so hard not to get carried away.
Mile 2 -- 6:23: I was really trying to relax during this mile and feed off the energy of a pack of dudes I was running with. There were 3 ladies (including my coach Tia who is incredibly fast and was just doing this race as a warm-up for a half marathon next week) not too far ahead and I didn't want to lose contact with them, but I didn't want to try to catch them yet either.
Mile 3 -- 6:22: Again just trying to stay relaxed. A dude next to me said something about trying to go get some people ahead of us, but that didn't work out so well. I think we caught one person, but at least I left the pack of dudes behind.
Mile 4 -- 6:13: This mile was a little bit downhill, but I was still surprised to see the split based on the fact that things were really starting to go south, lungs-wise.
Mile 5 -- 6:24: I had been warned that the last 2 miles of the race were long and hard. You have to run right past the finish line which is tough, and this mile just seemed long. Right at the 5 mile mark I pulled up to the 2 ladies ahead of me...by this time Tia was long gone and impossible to catch.
Mile 6 -- 6:23: Really just trying to hang on for dear life. At this point in races I usually start doing the math on my finish time...maybe that is a bad idea as I'm sure it ruins my focus. Sometimes it can be good though...I figured that if I didn't fall apart completely I would get a PR, although sub-39 would be close.
0.2 -- 5:50 pace: LOL at this "kick". My time was 39:08, a PR! 5th place female, 18th overall, 2nd in my age group. I think that the last 1.2 miles is where the marathon-focused training really shows...I was trying so hard to pick up the pace but had no more gears.
Then, horribly, an 8-mile cool down was required to complete the quasi-long-run. Luckily there were a bunch of other people who had miles to do so we distracted each other through the miles by talking about food. We were so hungry by the end that we picked and ate kumquats right off a tree in the park.
I spent the rest of the day laying on the couch in compression tights eating. Is this the best way to recover? If not, don't tell me, I don't care.
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