Firecracker 10K

I did it! I promised myself that by the end of the summer I’d run a 10K (6.2 miles) race. Here it is barely the beginning of July and I’ve got it in the bag! It was well earned too. Despite the evening start time of 7:30pm it was still 93 degrees when the race started. Hot, hot, hot! Mercifully we do not have high humidity around these parts unless we’re gearing up for rain so while toasty it was bearable.

My time was 1.20:55 which gave me a 12.5 min/mile. This is slightly over what I’ve been doing, but I always seem to run slower in race (not sure if its nerves or what), and it was warm. I read you should add 30 seconds/mile to your pace for every 10 degrees over 60. Factoring that in would adjust me to an 11 min/mile which is pretty much my normal pace.

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Anyway, I ended up coming in 6th to last, but placing 4th overall for my age/gender group (it was a small field ;-P). I’m just thrilled to have finished honestly. Throwing in the towel seriously crossed my mind around 2.5 miles when the race would back past the start line, but I pushed on. Around mile 4 my mouth was like sandpaper and I was trying to figure out if there was going to be any more water stations (there were only two, one at 2 miles, and one at 4.5) but starting to feel like I might actually make it. Mile 5 I started thinking they had mis-measured the distance because the miles seem really loooong. I checked later….they were right on target.

Now that I’ve finished a 10k there is a little voice in my head that says. You could do a half marathon you know. It’s only 13.1 miles and you already know you can do over half that (7.44 miles is my current distance record). If I do it won’t be until next spring though. I might try to do it over on the Westside too…Team Slow Poke said they’d let me hang with them (thanks Libby), and a support team would be good for that distance. We will see. For the time being I’ll keep plugging along. I’d like to do a sub-30 5k eventually, but I’ll work on increasing my distance as well.