May 10th, 2009 – Garner Catch Me if You Can 10K

Race Day!  I’m always nervous with anticipation when I get ready to run a race.  I don’t really have a running mentor, no race trainer, and no clue what I’m doing. LOL  This one was a pretty small race.  There were only 50 runners total in the 10K and that put my expectations pretty low as to how well I’d do.  I am too new to competitive running to know what a small race means in terms of the caliber of competition.  This race started EARLY!  I can understand why, after all it was in May in North Carolina.  By this time of year, it can be brutally hot and steamy by mid-morning and holding the race early allows it to be over early as well.  Still, that meant getting up at 4:45 AM to allow me the time to walk the dogs, get everyone up and be down there by 6:30 AM for a 7 AM race.  Colleen was competing in the 5K, which started at 7:05, so there wasn’t any chance I’d be done in time to let her run without the baby.

As we line up, I typically take the chance to size up my competition.  Sure enough, there seemed to be plenty of runners that would leave me in the dust.  Now, I try to keep perspective on it when I do this.  I’ve only been running since January of 2008, and only really competing in road races since November of 2008.  I can’t have any false belief that I’m going to win a race.  Most winners are running 10K races in 6 minute mile averages or faster.  I’m right now in the 6:55 to 7:15 range, given two races to establish that wide a gap. LOL  I would like to get to a point where I’m running at 6:45 or faster, but that still won’t put me in the winner’s circle.  So, I just like to find one runner and see if I can try to pace with them or just faster.  This time, though, I didn’t see anyone I thought would be a good person to “race” which only fed the belief that I was due for a butt kicking.

44:01.8!!  That’s not my personal record, which was 43:11 for the last race, but that wasn’t shabby considering I didn’t think I had anything for this race.  That was good enough for 9th overall and 3rd again in my age group.  The overall winner was 45, so I was the 4th fastest man in that age bracket, but by the rules, he doesn’t win both so I move up a spot.  I’ll take it.  That means now for 2 of my 3 10K races, I was in the top 3 for my age group.  That’s an impressive statement to me.  I was somewhat disappointed with my time, I left my kick until too late, but I finished strong.  I was in the end pleased with it, considering how I told myself I’d struggle.

Housekeeping:  6.2 miles in 44:01.8, for a 7:07 average mile.  596 calories burned.  Now, the calories burned is not something I’m typically paying attention to in the race, but since I have it, I include it here anyway.  The interesting thing for me in this race was that only at the very end when I did my kick did my heart rate get into zone 4.  That means I didn’t push myself hard enough, honestly, and that probably contributed to the slower pace.  I am full convinced now that most of this is mental and not physical.  I had enough gas to run hard at the end, I should have run harder sooner.  Lesson learned I suppose.

Now I’ll rest a few days and then get back into it.  I still have two weeks of this cardiac training program before I’m mostly on my own.  At that point, I have no idea what I’ll do, but I am hoping that in the next 5 months I have interesting experiences and will be ready to run this half marathon in November.  I’m already nervous about the distance.

Cheers!