Monday, May 01, 2006
Race Report: Kingdom House 10(?)K
I got to the race well ahead of time. It was good that I did as the rain started pouring down shortly after I got into the World's Fair Pavilion. I had a small snack as I watched the Everyday Circus performance. After the performance the rain had slackened and I was able to potty and drop off the t-shirt and other swag in my car, and get in a warm-up before the race. As the racers lined up, the sun came out. There was a delay in getting the race started because the pace car was delayed at the Children's Fun Run. Finally, the pace car arrived and we didn't have to use an ambulance as a pace car.
We took off and I tried to maintain a nice conservative pace. I fell in with a pair of runners. One of the nice things about the 10K is that you are going just fast enough to be competitive, but not so fast that you can't talk. At one point, the 5K and 10K paths diverged. As I started down the 10K path, I saw the leader coming back towards me. Having not hit the one-mile, I thought it was a lot fishy. When I saw more people streaming back towards me, I was confused. One guy yelled that there wasn't another volunteer at the turn, so everyone was turning around at a certain point. I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted to run the whole distance. But on the other hand, I didn't know the course well enough to run it on my own. And running a 10K completely on my own was not an attractive proposition. So I turned around and as soon as I did it, I regretted it. Part of the reason for running these races was to see how well my endurance would hold up. And I just love the distance. Once committed to the turnaround, I decided to pick up the pace. I wasn't running a 10K any more - it was more like a 4 mile race. And I can go faster for 4 miles than I can for 6.2. There were a couple of hills on the back half of the course and I ran each really well. I reeled in the only guy ahead of me that I knew was in the 10K and had a burst for the finish. I finished the race under 30:00, so I guess I ran about 7:30 miles.
Some observations:
We took off and I tried to maintain a nice conservative pace. I fell in with a pair of runners. One of the nice things about the 10K is that you are going just fast enough to be competitive, but not so fast that you can't talk. At one point, the 5K and 10K paths diverged. As I started down the 10K path, I saw the leader coming back towards me. Having not hit the one-mile, I thought it was a lot fishy. When I saw more people streaming back towards me, I was confused. One guy yelled that there wasn't another volunteer at the turn, so everyone was turning around at a certain point. I was torn. On the one hand, I wanted to run the whole distance. But on the other hand, I didn't know the course well enough to run it on my own. And running a 10K completely on my own was not an attractive proposition. So I turned around and as soon as I did it, I regretted it. Part of the reason for running these races was to see how well my endurance would hold up. And I just love the distance. Once committed to the turnaround, I decided to pick up the pace. I wasn't running a 10K any more - it was more like a 4 mile race. And I can go faster for 4 miles than I can for 6.2. There were a couple of hills on the back half of the course and I ran each really well. I reeled in the only guy ahead of me that I knew was in the 10K and had a burst for the finish. I finished the race under 30:00, so I guess I ran about 7:30 miles.
Some observations:
- Knowing the course would be good to avoid future occurences of this problem no matter what's wrong with the racers.
- I really prefer races where someone is calling out splits at the mile markers. Even on this race, knowing my splits on the abbreviated course would have helped.
- For these races where I'm really just trying to get a gauge on where I'm at running the distance is more important than placing well.
- I really like hills as I can lock in to them and concentrate on form, stride length, and pace.
# posted by mypetrock : 7:23 AM
