Greg's Running Blog

Last weekend I ran another race. It was another 10K and I did alright. at my last 5K race I ran a 19:29 which means that in theory I should be able to run a 40:32 10K. How do I figure this? There are calculators on-line that do just that. They predict race pace from race pace. So if you put in that you ran a 19:29 5K it would show that you should be able to run the aforementioned 40:32 10K or a 5:41 mile at full blast. This is the theory. Practice can be a bit different.

The race I ran was the 13th annual Fort Worth Zoo Run 10K. I have looked at previous years race results and based on my predicted time I was hoping for a top 3 finish in my age group and I was secretly hoping to break the 40 minute mark. So how did I do? I did fine.

The race started at 7:00, bright and early. This race is predominantly a 5K race, the 10K distance has only been added in the past several years. This meant that the 10K was the first race in the morning with just under 800 finishers while the 5K race had close to 2,000 runners. The weather was a bit warm at 63 degrees and it was cloudy with rain about to hit but we got spared and only the 5K racers got dumped by the rain.

The start was pretty fast at 6:07 and 6:18 for the first two 500m splits. The third split was still a 6:23 so the pace was certainly very fast for me even though I concentrated on keeping it easy, not going out too fast and letting the leader pack go. I clearly need more work on not going out too fast at the beginning.

By the 3rd km we were hitting some pretty good hills and my pace slowed down to slower than 7 minute miles on average and I started getting really worried about not hitting my target time or finishing in the top 3. I could worry all i wanted but my legs were just not getting any faster. My 5K split was actually 20:02 so I was still right on target to hit my goal as long as I could finish my race strong.

But the second half had even more hills and I was falling apart big time. I have tried to hold on but every step was harder than the last one. I wasn’t sure if I could even finish at this point, let alone meet my target. At one point I was contemplating walking and never running ever again. My legs felt like lead.

I event attempted to use one of the water stations at the 4 mile mark but my attempt ended in failure. I picked up the water cup, lifted it to my mouth, poured some of the water in my mouth and I could not swallow it. I ended up spitting it out and that was the last attempt at getting water. It was only a 10K so getting water during the race is unnecessary especially in the weather conditions we were running in but I figured since I’ll be having longer and longer races, this practice run was a good place to try to work on getting water. Well I failed. I’ll need to work on getting water into my body more at a later time.

There was a 48 year old guy who was passing me at the beginning then during a long straight in the middle I passed him back. Coming down the final downhill he passed me again. I am just not fast enough on the downhill. I’m too worried about letting myself go and really picking up the pace downhill. I will really need to work on it more.

The other problem I had was that I got disoriented and I thought we had much more left to go than we actually did. It wasn’t until we took the final turn and I saw the finish line that I started my final kick. Had I realized we were that close I would have started on it a good bit sooner.

Regardless of my sucking on the water station and the downhills I still managed to get a 40:55 in bettering my previous PR by almost 5 minutes from 1.5 month ago. I finished 22nd out of the 793 and got 3rd in my age group. I’m pretty happy with my result and I certainly know what I need to work on before my next race.

I have two more 10Ks coming up in this race season before I switch gears and start working on the longer races. I hope I’ll get two new PRs between the two races. And I know that I need to work on:

• not going out too fast early (I’m getting better at it)
• running downhill fast
• drinking water while running