| Google suggested I search for "baby yak" and I'm glad I did. |
After I got out of the car, I turned on my Garmin and... dead battery. I think using the light to check my split times in the early morning really drains the battery. Oh well... it's not like I usually change my running based on my splits. My 5-10k strategy is to run as fast as I can without feeling like I'm going to yack and then push it to yack territory once I can see the finish line.
We lined up at the start, sang the national anthem, (in which the singer got two words wrong - it's perilous fight not light and the flag waves o'er - not for- the the land of the free). Yeesh, I'm too young to get grumpy about things like that.
The race started and I followed my normal pacing strategy. The course is a little rolling with a net downhill on the way out and a net uphill on the way back (at least that's how it feels to me). I hit the mile 1 at 7:30. Just a little bit after mile 1 Dano and Art from Team in Training passed me and I yelled "hi". Mile 2 was another mostly downhill though a neighborhood and onto a country road. I passed that mile marker at 15:00. I started seeing the fast runners started coming back the other way at about mile 2.5, and the turn around was right before the 3rd mile marker, which I passed at about 22:3?.
The turnaround put us running uphill-ish and into the wind. I'm sure if I had my Garmin, my splits would reflect that. One kind of funny thing happened at this point. I came up behind a man and woman running together. The woman looked at the man and said, "Now this is the part that's really motivational because we start to pass people." At that moment I ran past them, and the man said, "I see what you mean. That was great!" I also heard (but didn't see) Linda (who ended up with a big PR!) yell from the other direction.
At mile 3.5ish we turned onto a bike path that rolls through a wooded area (including open hunting ground, which always makes me wish I'd thrown on my orange hat before I left). I hit mile 4 at around 30:30 and figured that as long as I could hang in there and hit mile 5 before 40 minutes I could definitely finish in under 50. I didn't want to start picking up the pace too soon because I remembered there being a huge hill at the end, and I was not going to break 50 minutes if I wasted 2 actually yacking on the side of the road.
I hit mile 5 at 38:20 so I was pretty good going up the last hill (which was not as bad as I'd remembered) and then pushing it into the finish line for an official time of 48:10. Not a PR, but not that far off from my PR on a much hillier course. (I still maintain that the Bellin is a loop course that manages to be 100% downhill).
I know so many runners are all about the marathon, but to be honest, the 10k is my favorite distance and it seems to be the distance that likes me best, too. For that reason I think I'm going to focus my speedwork over the winter on 10k stuff (using my Runner's World FIRST book as a guide). My next race after coming out of winter hibernation is the Shamrock Shuffle 10k, and it would be pretty awesome to PR in that race because it has a monster hill that you have to go over on the out and back part of the course. Plus 10k training is way more winter-friendly than trying to be outside for hours doing a marathon training long run.
And with that I need to go be thankful that I didn't have any competition for the washing machine even though it looks like all of our neighbors are home and we are probably the only ones who celebrate Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey day, all.
