My heart wasn't in this race. When I got up this morning, I wanted to go to bed more than I wanted to go run a race. But I had paid for the race, so I went and did it. It was okay, but not great. I didn't get there particularly early. I picked up my bib and chip, then ran 2 miles of warmup and did my dynamic stretching routine, and then it was time for the race to start. The race was on the trail that I run most Saturdays. It sent out a ways to the north and then turned around, went past the start to the south, took a detour onto a road, which meant going down a hill, turning around, and running up the hill, then out so more, and then back to the start. The hill was in mile 4. The race was chip timed, but they didn't have a timing mat at the start. So I guess they just went from the gun to when you crossed the finish timing mat. I started my watch when I crossed what I guessed was the starting line and got a time of 50:22 for myself, but my official time is 50:33. So it's a little more than 2 minutes off my 10K PR, but I feel okay about it since I'm not really trained for a 10K right now and I'm in the heavy part of marathon training. My average pace (according to my Garmin, not the race results) was 8:02 and splits were 8:23, 7:58, 7:59, 8:18, 7:55, 7:53, 0.27 (again, the Garmin distance) @ 7:20.
During about the 2nd mile, I came upon a woman who looked like she was probably in my age group and who was running about my pace. So I ran with her for maybe a mile and talked with her. She was here from Kansas City visiting her sister who has 1-year-old triplets. After a while, I pulled ahead of her and stayed ahead of her for the rest of the race. I finished about a minute ahead of her. But then I talked to her again after we were both finished and I met her sister and the triplets. She was also registered for the 5K but she was going to just run it at an easy pace and not race it. I had not registered for the 5K, even though that was my intention at one point, but I ran the 5K with her as a bandit. According to my watch, since I didn't have a number or a timing chip for the 5K, was 31:15. So that's an AP of 10:06 with splits of 11:00 (very crowded at the start), 9:39, 9:44, and 0.1 @ 8:59. After the 5K, I went in the rec center and changed into dry but cooler clothes (shorts and short sleeve shirt - whereas I was wearing pants and a long-sleeved shirt before), and then I went back out on the trail and ran 5.7 miles to give me 17 for the day. AP: 9:29. Splits: 10:09, 9:41, 9:17, 9:24, 9:12, 0.70 @ 9:04. It was chilly at the start of the first race - 40° and 21% humidity. By the time I finished the last run, it was 59° and 12% humidity. Winds were calm the whole time. It was great weather for running. I'm tired. I'd like to take a nap.
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