3M River City 10k

Today was a great day for a race! The weather was almost perfect, except for a North-Northwest breeze. The temperature was near 40, and the sun was behind clouds. The course is flat and fast. If you don't PR on a day like today on a race like this, you're having a bad day. Bad days happen, but that's what it would take not to rock this race today. There were several very fast times today. This was a great choice for the RRCA Alabama State 10k championship.

I ran a 40:57 and was second in the 35-39 age group. I wanted to BREAK 41:00 on a 10k in 2009. Today, I did that! And, I did smash my previous 10k PR of 44:24.

The overall results are available here. David Riddle was the overall winner, and several of my friends had GREAT times today. Congratulations to my good friend Madelyn Patton for winning the female masters title. Congrats to Glen and Barry who rocked PR's today, too.

First, thanks to Glen for giving me a ride down there. I'll be happy to drive next time. I enjoyed the company. Also, thanks to Mike Greene for talking me into this. I didn't believe I could run a 41:00 today. Mike believed I could go faster and convinced me of it. I would have probably settled for a 43:00-ish without Mike's encouragement. Now I know I can break 41:00 and 40:00 is next. Thanks, Mike. I need to learn to run harder during races and Mike is teaching me to do that.

I did a 2.1 mile warm up with Glen and Dink and a 3.4 mile cool down with Glen and Barry for 11.7 total today.

I don't have a lot of comments about the race because after the first packs formed, I did not get passed and I only passed a couple of runners. It seems like I'm in a sort of no man's land right now. There are a lot of sub-40 10k-ers out there and there are a lot of near 44:00 10k-ers out there. One runner that I passed was a 10-ish year old kid. I remember hearing someone near the start saying that the little boy was going to get run over starting up there in the front. Well, he ran the first mile with me in 6:25 and finished the race in 42:00-ish. So, someone would have to be hauling it pretty good to run him over! He proved his worthiness to be near the starting line!

Adrenaline kicked in at the start, and I started way too fast at about a 5:35 or 5:40 pace. That only lasted about 100 yards and I caught my error and slowed down and hit my stride at about a 6:30 pace. I was able to hold near that pace for most of the race. The only exception was the fourth mile. The last half mile or so of mile 4 was right into the wind and I clocked that mile in 6:44 which really disappointed me. Splits below:

1. 6:26
2. 6:40 (slowed too much from the early pace)
3. 6:25 (grooving again)
4. 6:44 (ewww. Really disappointing, into the wind.)
5. 6:37
6. 6:32 (Now I'm getting back to where I need to be, but too late.)
7. 0.2 miles in 1:30 by my watch, but 1:32 by the chip.

Miles 2 and 4 were awful. Mile 5 I'm ok with because I was hurting and talking myself into holding on. I know I have room for improvement, but I really gave it all I had today, except for mile 2. I'm not sure why I slowed down so much there except that I wanted to be sure I had enough in the tank to finish strong. Mile 4 was the wind and I just need to work on running into the wind.