This was a great 5/10 mile race put on by ATC, 2 loops for 10 miler. This was pretty much designed to be a solid training run for me, and it served that purpose well. My goal was to run 10 sub 7 miles ... and I accomplished that for the most part. Alex ran the 5 mile, so we paced each other the first loop. He had two classic lines ... first at 3.2 miles he said he was dying (he is used to cross country 5ks & has never raced over 5k ... I thought the timing of that comment was funny. Second, at about 4.5 miles, he said, "I gotta take a crap, gotta go" ... at which point he proceeded to drop me! He finished in 33:59, avg pace of 6:47, and won 1st in his Age Group. Mile 6 was lonesome, lost my running buddy & no one else around, alot more people do the 5 miler. Pace dropped off a little here. Got passed somewhere in Mile 7, so picked it up a little. My legs were really stiff from Thursdays hill workout, I kinda checked out mentally at the 7 mile mark & figured I would take an easy mile so I could finish strong ... I was really surprised I actually held onto a 7 minute pace here for Mile 8, as I was not really in the game & concerned about my legs. Mile 9 I got passed by an ATC competitive team female, so I went stride for stride with her for a 1/4 mile. Maybe she did not like that, as she quickened the pace & I fell in behind. I knew she was an experienced runner that would finish strong, so I just tried to stay within 20 yards. In Mile 10, she passed a runner, who I drafted behind for a while. He looked back and told me drafting was free. I told him to just keep in striking distance of the girl, and I would repay the favor at the end. About a 100 yards later, he said she was pulling away, so I passed him and told him to cmon ... he was hurting ... he didn't. I gradually closed the gap from 20 to 10 to 5 strides ... then waited to see my son, to turn it on. He was about 200 meters from the finish & told me it was time to sprint. Well, I did not actually sprint cuz this was a training run, but I did make the pass and lengthen the lead to the finish. I forgot I had turned Autolap off on my last training run, so had to use the Garmin player to record my split times. My Garmin said I ran a 6:50 pace & covered 10.15 miles, for purposes of my mile splits I just spread the extra distance over each mile, based on where I had a data point. 1.02 6:55 6:55
2.03 7:09 14:04 3.03 6:46 20:50 4.05 6:52 27:42 5.09 6:53 34:35 6.10 7:16 41:51 7.09 6:56 48:47 8.10 7:03 55:50 9.14 6:51 1:02:41 10.15 6:41 1:09:22 Glad I ran the 10 miler, but there were times I was thinking why didn't I just do the 5! Well, obviously I need the mileage ... but I think it is also a good thing I did not have to race my son the last 1/2 mile, not sure I would have liked the result, and never would have heard the end of it! It was great to be able to run the first half of my run with him though! Oh, and I also met fellow FRB blogger Timp, that was cool, and I think we are both doing the ATC 10k next weekend. Maybe I will chase him for as many miles as I can!
| 