Beautiful race today at Tuacahn! I ran the 10k portion of the Tuacahn Duathlon. Very small race, I would guess not much more than 20 runners for the 10k and probably about the same in the other races. There were 4 races going on:5k, 10k, sprint duathlon & olympic duathlon. Perfect weather (about 40 degrees), blue sky w/ red rock background. I saw Ruth before the start and we warmed up a bit together. I also introduced myself to another blogger who was wearing the racing singlet. I feel really silly now because I can't remember his name! Started with an "L", didn't look older, but he introduced me to his daughter & grandchild, so I would guess late 40's? Anyway- hope I can remember his name. NICE family! Steve H. was also there handing out water and I saw another blue jacket that I didn't recognize. So a small FRB representation, but hey- this was a small race. Ok- onto the race:
I started out way too fast, under 8 min. miles. I had set my garmin for funsies to 49:45 to see if I could break 50. My best ever 10k was a 8:17 pace on the downhill spectrum course so I knew this was a VERY ambitious goal for today. My overall pace today ended up 8:29. Definately not a PR, but I think perhaps a PR effort. This was a tough course. First 2 miles flat, then about 1.5 uphill into snow canyon park. This is where it got really interesting. There was supposed to be a spot marked turn around, I was at 3.5 mi. on my garmin and still didn't see the turn around or any water station. There was supposed to be water every mile but I only saw it at mi. 1 & mi. 2- I passed them up thinking I would get water around mi. 3 or 1/2 way through the race- none to be found. At this point I'm wondering if I should turn around to keep looking for the turnaround, then I see Ruth running back the other way- she tells me to turn around NOW! Apparently the 2 other runners ahead of me missed the turn around too, and they ran even farther than me. So I turned around. I was frustrated that I ended up running over a 7 mi. race, but it was encouraging to be the 3rd overall runner and 1st in my age group (scored a very pretty medal) (given their wasn't much competition -LOL!) I spoke w/ the race director afterwards he was really apologetic and swore there was a sign there- he doesn't know what happened to it. I believe him, because the rest of the race was really well ran. They gave out nice race packets before hand w/ a really nice waterbottle and some other trinkets. Then they had a free kids' race (1/3 mi). Each kid rec. a medal and bag of goodies w/ some nice small toys. My son LOVED that. So I'm cutting them some slack, don't know if everyone will feel that generous though... My official race time was 59-something, but that was because I ran over 7 miles! I used my Garmin virtual trainer and at 6.21 it had 52:45 for me so I'm going with that! | 