This year, the Statesman Capitol 10,000 drew over 14,000 runners. That’s well over one per meter which, if you think about it, is pretty impressive. The start was nowhere near as bad as I had imagined since it was staged - we were in the third corral with about 4,500 of our closest friends. Even though we were at the back, it only took us about 2:30 to cross the starting line. All of the untimed fun-runners, walkers, and strollers were supposed to start well behind us. Most of them actually did, as well, which was great.

So we head off, running up Congress Avenue. The crowd was amazing - I ran with the pack the entire way, from start to finish. Not the same pack all the way, but just tons of people. Stephanie waved hello just after the line, and headed over to walk to the finish while Jason, Marcus and I took the long way ’round.

The weather was bad. I’d guess 70% humidity, nasty and sticky. The temperature was fine, but we were really wishing it would rain. I was covered in sweat before we’d been out for ten minutes. The first mile is slightly uphill, and even with the staged start there were some walking packs to move around, but it was still pretty fun. Unfortunately I forgot my ForeRunner, so I only remember a couple of my splits. The first mile went by in about 8:45, which was pretty good considering the conditions.

We passed up the first waterstop, and headed West. I think that I need to work on my downhill running - I’m pretty sure that I could have picked up more speed but was too concerned about blasting my quads or overextending and tweaking my ITB again. From then on, the whole race was about the same - I ran miles 2 through 5 at about a nine minute pace, hitting the fifth mile marker at about 45:00. Then things started to slow down a little more.

I don’t know if it was the humidity, or the fact that I’m still reconditioning, or just getting lazy, but after five miles I started to slow. I tried to give it a kick up over the South 1st st bridge, but just didn’t have anything left. Which is weird - I just did this plus 20 miles about six weeks ago. Ah, well. Whatever caused it, I was spent. Even after the turn onto Riverside with the finish line in sight 4/10 away, I didn’t speed up. Well, I’d speed up for all of 20 strides, then go back down to my sad 11:00 shuffle, finally crossing the finish at 58:11 for a 9:23 average pace.

Oh, well. It was still a PR at this distance, since this was the first 10K I’d ever done. And I’m determined to see that it won’t remain my PR at this distance for very long. My friend Alex turned in an amazing 46:33, which put him into the top-500. He’ll be starting in the faster blue corral next year, and I’d like to be in there with him as well. We’ll see what happens, but I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at it.

Time: 58:11
Distance: 6.21
Calories burned: 892

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