I’ll start out by saying that this wasn’t a PR.  Not even close.  It was, however, a really fun race, taking place in the middle of a fun weekend, surrounded by fun friends.

Fun!

Going into it I knew that I wasn’t going to PR.  To be honest, I was more than a little concerned about just surviving the distance.  I haven’t run more than 10.5 miles since September, and still have stamina issues from my illness recovery.  So just entering was a bigger deal to me than I tried to make it sound.  Luckily I have a wonderful wife and some truly great friends who inspire me and give me confidence - a real blessing.

Anyway, enough of the mushy stuff.  I found out that my 305 doesn’t like to charge in the car like my 301 did (even though it claims that it is), so I ran watchless today.  My goal was to head out around a 9:00-9:10 pace for the first half, then see if I could pick it up on the way back.  Naturally, I didn’t follow through.

The start was delightfully informal.  There were only 400 people running, so even feeling slow I was only about 10 rows back - still, I was as surprised as anyone when we just all took off after what I can only preseume was a whispered command to the leaders to go.  No air horns here!  After a couple of miles I asked one of my running neighbors how our pace was, and learned that they were aiming for 8:45s but we’d actually been hitting 8:35 instead.  Hmm.

Long story short, I ran 8:35s pretty much like clockwork for 10 miles, always within 10M or so of those runners (turns out they were Katie (who came in 2nd in her age group) and George (who won his, and looks almost exactly the same as Kenny Hill from behind)).  I felt pretty good the whole way, too, keeping my breathing in check and trying to make my footfalls as light as possible.  One thing that was great was seeing my Dad and his wife at the 5 (and 8) mile points - very cool.

After we hit the 10 mile part, it started to get harder.  Some of that was mental; I’d only done a single 9 miler and a single 10.5 in preparation for this, so I was entering uncharted (or at least not recently charted) territory.  Also, I was beginning to get a bit tired, again probably from lack of training.  George and Katie began to pull ahead, and I let them go while I continuted to struggle.

Even so, it wasn’t really bad, just not as flowing as it had been.  I was working harder on the very slight hills, and started to breath a little more often.  I’d been jockeying with another runner (Michael) who was in my age group ever since mile 6, and he passed me at this point - I moved ahead at a waterstop, and we kept gently pushing each other along.

I had planned to pick it up at the 20K mark, and I may have put on a slight boost but realistically I was pretty happy just to keep moving.  When I made the final turn towards the finish line I saw Stephanie, Carrie, and Shawn waiting there and also saw two other runners ahead of me in the chute, maybe 20M up (with maybe 60M to go).  I put on a really fun sprint and was able to pass both of them to the line, which felt absolutely great and proved to myself that I had indeed run a smart race.

As for my pace - I knew it was right on 8:35 at mile 10, thanks to George’s updates.  It turns out that they’d picked it up a little at the end, and while I was working harder I hadn’t actually dropped off like I thought I had.  My final time was 1:52:07 for an 8:33 pace!

Not bad, and a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.  Better yet, now I think I’ve got enough practice under my belt to start actually working on speed again.  This weekend I’ll be in Columbus for Carrie and Shawn’s wedding, but sometime in June I’m calling Gilbert.  I’m ready to come back!

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