My first race at 47 years old. Not a bad start, 9th woman (60th overall out of 307). I won a nice technical shirt and a $25 gift certificate. It was a lonely race, we got strung out by about mile 2 and though there were people in front of me, and people behind me, for the most part I was running all alone. A little windy in some sections. Cool race though through the downtown "Barrio" section of town across the freeway on this new pedestrian bridge and on a bike path for a while.
Overall, I am very happy with this race. I wasn't sure what to expect after coming off of nearly 5 months of only base mileage. I also have a sore throat and almost did not go to the race this morning. I asked Dean, "what would you do?" (if he was feeling a cold coming on), he said, "at this point I would probably run it". I think what he meant by "at this point" was "since you already got me up at 5AM on a weekend so you race this thing" ;-). I really expected to run in the 7:25 pace range -- I knew that I wasn't in shape to run the expected time based on my 1/2 marathon last January, but I knew I was in better shape than my old 10 mile PR ... but, it is hard to judge just how things were going to go. It was actually a very hilly course, and it was a little hot for racing (sorry Carolyn in Colorado -- it was not snowing here, rather it was in the mid-to-high 70's at race time). I went out conservative and hoped I would either be able to hang on or speed up! Splits: 7:32 (uphill) 7:35 (pretty flat but lots of turns) 7:19 (downhill) 7:13 (flat) 7:32 (flat - I was a little worried about my pace, I wanted to slow down and make sure I wasn't breathing hard) 7:18 (long uphill -- there were three women in front of me that I really did not want to beat me -- I started trying to catch them here) 7:13 (rolling - some downhill, some uphill, lots of wind) 6:27 (this is wrong I think the mile marker was in the wrong spot - it was uphill, I passed about 3 guys during this mile) 7:19 (very hard stretch - slightly rolling the worst uphill as we went underneath the railroad tracks) 8:03 (split was wrong the last 400 meters was downhill and I was trying to hold off a guy that was right behind me, he got me 100 meters from the finish, I am absolutely sure we weren't running 8 min pace here -- if you average the last 3 miles it is 7:16 pace, which is probably correct) No chip timing -- my gun time was 1:13:39, I started my watch as I hit the start line. I missed overall masters by 30 seconds (the cheating woman from the cross-country race got it, she is almost 5 years younger than me!). Not bad, I definately think that with a month or so of training I can get my 10K goal ... so I am happy. I also think with a month or so of training I could have beaten cheating woman too, I just didn't have the speed today. I can't wait to see how everyone did in their races this weekend! Happy Sunday bloggers.
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