Oh look, A Race Report. The day after the actual race. For once. Dear blog readers (all 3 of you) I promise to be a bit more active here in the future and actually write up some of the races that I run and other interesting things that come my way. I have so much I want to write here that I either haven’t finished or haven’t yet started. Bur first, a report on yesterday’s 10k charity run.
Little me at the finish, in my dorky, oversize team shirt managing to give the rest of the team a smile, despite pretty much wanting to puke.
First, a bit of set-up: I’m supposed to be deep in the heart of training for the next marathon on October 26, where I’d hoped to qualify for Boston. In the last three weeks I’ve missed one long run and about 50 miles worth of other runs, putting me hopelessly in the hole and making me readjust my BQ race to next spring. I’ve been working full time, doing aikido a minimum of three days a week and still trying to get 50 miles a week of running in. Something had to give and it was the running. After we got back from our excellent Netherlands-by-Bike (yet another post I haven’t managed to make – at this point, I have a travel back-log rather than travelogues), I could feel that I’d done some minor damage to my right knee, likely the result of me not being careful enough when I switched seats out on my touring bike. My knees are important to me, so I cancelled all the longer runs until the legs felt better and this was probably the right decision even though it hurt (not the knees, the pride) to do so. I suppose a step-down from marathon training with a bit of enforced rest is probably an OK 10 km training plan.
And a bit of background: This run is the Lauf für Mehr Zeit (Run for more time) that the local AIDS charity puts on every year. It started in 1995 as a 5 km fun run whose main purpose was to raise awareness and money. It didn’t even have timing chips or a 10 km option until 2012, and in 2012 and 2013, the 10 km course was short by about 2/3 of a km, so my 2013 time of 47:39 is utterly meaningless in the annals of my actual abilities and 10 km PR. My actual 10 km PR of 51:07 is from 2013’s Höchster Kreisstadt Lauf (which is a net downhill course run in early May). I had high hopes that this year’s course would be actually 10 kilometers instead of that random distance they seem to like so much.
Race day prep: The 5km race starts at 4 pm and the 10 km an hour after at 5 pm. I was racing as part of the team for the company that the Wife works for and where I’ve also been working as temp help all summer. That meant that I had some function as holder of things, giver-outer of numbers, and person-who-stays-at-the-meeting-point-for-all-the-late-comer-10-km-runners. So I got some very nice time stretching out in the sun before the race, but absolutely no warm-up outside of biking downtown on the city bike to get to the race. I did make us some relatively healthy oatmeal for breakfast, so we had that going for us. I didn’t even get to watch our 5 km racers (including the Wife who was 10th in a very big age group and in the top 10% of all the women running the 5 km. Only one person running on our work team was faster than she was in the 5km!) finish. I missed watching our 5 km walkers finish as they took their sweet time and only crossed the finish minutes before the 10k started. I also failed to see or document in pictures the inflatable starting arch deflate and flutter down to land directly on the Wife and everyone in her vicinity as the 5k started.
Race: I ducked into the one big giant corral for the 10k. There were 864 starters this year and as usual, about half of the people way up at the front had absolutely no idea what they were doing there. I thought I was pretty near the front, but still had to do the start-line shuffle well past where I wanted to. I also apparently started my GPS too early. The actual timing mat was about 10 meters past the starting arch where I hit start on the GPS. Then after I got out of the traffic jam, I went out much too ridiculously fast for the first 2 km or so. It’s a bad sign when at km 3 you already want the race to be over. It was really hot, the sun was beating down for the first time in what felt like weeks, my team shirt was both too big, (yes, it’s a small. No, I didn’t realize until the day of how ridiculous it would look on me.) and I really wasn’t trained or quite fit enough to attempt to break 50 minutes. Which is what I got into my head to do yesterday. All I had to do was run 5 minute kilometers. Ten of them. In a row. That doesn’t sound too bad. Does it?
Here’s the breakdown from my possibly not-so-trusty FR 305:
| Lap |
Time |
Dist (mi) |
Pace |
| 1 |
05:15.8 |
0.62 |
8:28 |
| 2 |
04:56.5 |
0.62 |
7:57 |
| 3 |
04:50.6 |
0.62 |
7:48 |
| 4 |
04:59.4 |
0.62 |
8:02 |
| 5 |
05:11.2 |
0.62 |
8:21 |
| 6 |
05:11.0 |
0.62 |
8:20 |
| 7 |
05:04.0 |
0.62 |
8:09 |
| 8 |
04:54.4 |
0.62 |
7:54 |
| 9 |
05:09.7 |
0.62 |
8:18 |
| 10 |
04:40.4 |
0.58 |
8:05 |
You can see here that right in the middle of things I had kind of a disaster after blowing myself up going out way too fast. Then after repeating every mantra I could think of about pain, pain-caves, not giving up, and the fact that I’ve done much harder things, I managed to pull it together slightly until I started feeling too sorry for myself and discovered that my legs didn’t really want to stay with the whole running-as-fast-as-you-can program right near the end. I haven’t raced in this much sustained pain in a long time. Well, that’s a complete lie. I think the last 10k of the marathon in May felt exactly like this, I just put it out of my mind. Here’s the problem. I seem to be at the place where in order to get faster, I have to hurt a lot more. Every race now involves a decision point to be faster and feel it or be content and slow. The problem with this race is that due to my inability to correctly pace a 10k, that decision felt like it came anew every 20 meters or so for about 7 kilometers.
My GPS or the Race Organizers: You’ve probably noted that the last lap appears to be about 4/100 of a mile too short. That’s about 65 meters, or at the pace of the last half km where I did miraculously have a bit of a finishing kick, about 23 seconds. I checked the race FB page and no one’s commented on the course being short. I also checked some other folks’ GPS uploads of the course on the Garmin site and they all seem to have run a full 10k or a bit more. This race is run downtown and it’s a winding two-lap course amongst very tall buildings and the 305 has a somewhat dated algorithm that did, in fact, occasionally spout gibberish at me in the middle of the race, so it is possible that my GPS actually was a bit wonky and that’s why things look so uneven pacing-wise.
Regardless: According to the official race time, I completed 10k in 49:51, which would be a huge PR and OMG under 50 minutes for a 10k. I never thought I could do something like that when I started running again 5 years ago. If the course really was a bit short, the extrapolated time still puts me somewhere less than 50:30, still a PR, but I’ll wonder forever if I’ve actually run an actual PR or not. And maybe I’ll manage to pace the next one a bit better. One can always hope. Huh. After writing it out, I don’t feel nearly as bad about what a disaster of a race this was. Whatever it was, it really was a fast effort for me. Sixth in my age group and 36th overall of 307 women. Also, we raised a lot of money for a good cause.
And have a bonus .gif of the cats made by Google’s Auto-Awesome feature.
L on Wheels 