Race Recap!
23 - Kbenson13 - Run Houston! U of H 10k (50:00 / 47:22)
I was seriously regretting signing up for this race. Late September is still dang hot in Houston and running for 50 minutes at max speed in the heat and humidity seemed like a worse and worse idea as the race got closer and closer.
Then, at the beginning of last week, I got sick. It was just a nasty cold (with a fever, chills and feelings of weakness--it was great!), but it knocked me out of running for most of my one-week taper. Also, I'm not sure I was really over being sick until *maybe* Saturday but may I'm still not? Who knows....
And the last half of last week was spent in Denver at the Great American Beer Festival, which I go to every year. (I think I have mentioned I'm a craft beer fan before. Wondering if any other craft beer fans on this site have ever been? If not--you should definitely go! It's an amazing time.) Not the best way to end the taper, though I did get my final two pre-race runs in in the lovely weather they were having in the Mile High City while I was there.
The one saving grace is that it rained like crazy in Houston on Saturday, pushing temps down for this race on Sunday by about 10 degrees. It was hardly "cool" but a race time temperature of 73 degrees beat the pants off of the 83 degrees (plus) I was fearing.
This is the first time I raced a 10K for time, and only the second time I've "raced" the distance. I was a little nervous and had a lot of adrenaline going at the start. Unfortunately, this means I got off to a FAST start, going well over a minute per mile faster than my planned pace. I *really* paid for the later in the race. As the race went on, the sun came from behind the clouds and it got hotter just as I was running out of gas from my fast start. This meant miles 3-6.2 were a suffer fest for me. I seriously considered walking at several points, but powered through. I even picked up the pace for the last mile.
Now here's the crazy thing. My official time was 47:22, good for 7:38/mile pace. This was more or less my goal race pace, before T&D adjustment and about 10 seconds/mile faster than goal pace as adjusted. I couldn't be more thrilled with that result! BUT, I'm skeptical of it. My GPS said I only ran 5.85 miles, rather than 6.22. That seems like a pretty huge discrepancy. I haven't seen anything from the race organizers that would indicate that they short-measured the course. Their website states that all of their races are USAT&F certified though, so maybe it was just the GPS? It was a 2-loop course and there were several switchbacks on each loop. I can only think that these switchbacks screwed up the GPS.
Anyway I hope it's an accurate time because if it is, then I did a heck of a job despite some late setbacks and poor race-day pace execution. If I did do this well, I give a ton of credit to
@DopeyBadger for creating my training program and being an encouraging voice along the way.
Oh, I finished 6th in my age group (out of 59) and 63rd out of 1075. Not bad for a newbie runner!
If you got this far, thanks for reading my recap!