Well, it was a perfect day to run the Sporting Life 10K along with 10,000 others. About 14° Celsius at the finish and clear skies. And I began well. More than well, in fact. Hoping to break 55:00 (a 5:30/km pace), I set off quite quickly and was running close to 5:05 pace for the first 4 kilometres. But I knew I didn’t really have 10K in my legs this morning. I hadn’t run at all since my last race four weeks ago, and although my breathing was good, my legs felt a bit heavy. I figured I could slow down my pace and still make my goal time. Then something weird started to happen.
I have a very fancy GPS watch (Garmin 405) and around the time I began to feel tired, it kept notifying me of my split times several metres BEFORE the course markers. As the race went on, this happened earlier and earlier, until by the end, my watch was reporting that the course was almost 400 metres longer than 10K. As a result, according to my highly calibrated (well, accurate to within 5m, according to it) watch, my 10K time was actually 53:32. When I stopped it at the official finish line, it read 55:12. Odd.
Anyway, even though I didn’t quite reach my goal of breaking 55:00 officially, I felt pretty good for the first half of the race. If only this had been a 5K!
I did struggle in the last half, and felt really dehydrated. Stopping to walk and drink water almost every kilometre near the end wasn’t pretty, but I’ve learned a lesson for our upcoming 10K race in Atlanta on July 4. The Peachtree Road Race will have more than 50,000 participants and the weather will likely be MUCH hotter, so I’m going to make sure I drink plenty of water, Gatorade, whatever it takes.
Gun Time: 56:58.8
Chip Time: 55:23.5
Overall Place: 4901/10762
Gender Place: 3159/4857
Age Group (M40-44) Place: 390/597
2008 Chip Time: 54:32.1
2007 Chip Time: 51:22.7
2006 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2005 Chip Time: (didn’t run)
2004 Chip Time: 52:30.9