Great race; then things turn pear-shaped
Up at 5. Out the door before 6. Parking near downtown shortly thereafter. I park at Town Lake Park (where Riverside dead-ends into a parking lot at Lamar). The run from there to the race Start gives me a pleasant little mile or two warm-up. I parasitically use the Rogue area to stash my back-pack, I remove my warmups, use the Chem-Cans, move around a little, chat, and wait for the start.
I'm thinking about "Start Easy, Finish Strong!", "increasing effort, consistent pace", "have no time expectation, what do you need now". I want to negative split without sandbagging the first miles. I want a PR. I don't want to run with a pre-conceived notion of what time I want to finish in. Go figure!? Over analyzing, ya think?
I'm later told that that was Desiree Ficker who sang the (US) National Anthem and Gilbert sang the Burundi National Anthem.
And, at 7 sharp(-ish), we're off.
The first miles are OK, I feel fatigued from yesterday, struggling more than I want, but OKish.
I wasn't enjoying the middle miles. I wanted to DNF during the mid-miles. I'd had enough, wasn't feeling good. I don't know why I kept going, but I decided to drop back to long-run pace and keep going. But then we must have hit a down-grade or something because I didn't slow appreciably relative to others around me.
I was OK going up Scenic. I failed, however, to appreciate the views! Coming down was nice, and when we hit Oyster Landing/Mozart's (Mile 6 1/2? 7?) I opened up a little and started playing "Pick a back and reel it in". That worked most of the way back to the finish line (sorry,
ironmatt, yours was one of the backs I picked). However, I died on the final 800 meters or so, approaching the final corner and the long gentle climb to the finish just seemed too long.
For the entire race, I kept hearing huge cheers for "Erin" (or maybe "Aron"), so there was someone close behind me who had a huge fan base! At one point I checked to make sure I didn't have "Erin" on my race-number:)
[Edit: Ha! Yes, I found a 27 year-old "Erin" who was 1 second slower than me on the first 5-mile split, 4 seconds slower than me on the 2nd 5-mile split, crossed the start timing mat within 4 seconds of me, she must have been on my heels the entire race!]
Distance Challenge EAS Run for the Water 10 Miler time: 1:12:52. A PR by ~45 seconds (over last years much colder Girl Scout 10 Miler on the not-yet-opened tolls roads).
Official 5-Mile splits: 37:01, 35:51 (both, interestingly, ranked 37/147 in my AG)
My unofficial mile splits: 7:11, 7:18, 7:38, 7:22, 7:34, 7:33, 7:16, 7:09, 6:47, 7:09.
I'm really pleased with the final 3 miles. Final 4 really, if it weren't for a "too fast" first mile:)
[
builderben,
traininglogtold me that you and I were basically running side-by-side going past her in the first mile, and that you were just in front of me in the final mile ... (do you look like the picture on your posts? (the male runner one, not the naked baby one))]
Then things went pear-shaped:
I had intended to ride to my swim workout. But my car exploded -- well overheated in a cloud of steam -- on the way home from the race and by the time my wife collected me and we'd got things sorted out it was too late for me to ride to the swim workout.
Then, having driven to the swim workout in my wife's car, it was canceled because the two teenage lifeguards our group is contractually bound to have before we can swim did what teenagers do on Sunday mornings and must still be in bed, were no shows, making 20 disappointed/annoyed wanna-be swimmers. And on the way home I spilled my Gatorade in my wife's car:(
And now I feel crappy. Not sure whether I'm hungry, need to vomit, sit on the toilet or nap ...
Geek-o-meter stats: 1:12:52, 10 miles, 7:17 min/mile, 1300 calories, 147HR (max 159HR)
~70F, humid, foggy,