Papa John's 10 Miler 2011 Recap

Ah, another Triple Crown come and gone.

Yesterday went better than I thought it would and I was pleasantly surprised with my performance. I got up at 6:30 am and had my usual breakfast, SunButter on a piece of bread with cut up banana on top. I headed to the race (sans running buddy) and got stuck in traffic. Normally I would have been extremely anxious and freaking out about the traffic, but I remained calm. I like to park far away from race starts so I can get in a decent warm up so that's what I did yesterday - I think I had close to a mile walk/run to the start and about 5 minutes to stretch and get composed before the race began.

The race took us down a mostly flat road (Southern Parkway) for 3 miles or so, through three miles of hills (yes, three miles of hills) in Iroquois Park, back down Southern Parkway, over a bridge on Central Avenue, to Papa John's Cardinal Stadium, into the stadium, and one lap around it for the finish.

Here are my stats:

Mile 1: 10:29
Mile 2: 10:13
Mile 3: 10:18
Mile 4: 10:30
Mile 5: 10:39
Mile 6: 10:10
Mile 7: 9:47
Mile 8: 10:13
Mile 9: 10:07
Mile 10: 10:05

The variance of my times makes sense due to what part of the course I was on. My slowest mile, mile 5, was partially on the biggest and steepest hill of Iroquois Park. I ate a GU after 60 minutes of running and you can see how that speed me up for mile 7. And finally, with the finish in view, my adrenaline kicked in and I picked up the pace for the final two miles. My official time was 1:43:51, which is about 8 minutes slower than last year. However, I think that's pretty good based on losing a month and a half of training!

I went into the race telling myself that I could walk if I needed to, and I thought that maybe I would take a few walking breaks after mile 4 or 5. However, after mile 4 I felt good so I kept running, and then after mile 5 I felt good, and the trend continued until I got to mile 9 and knew that there would be no point to stop with the finish so close! It was better for me to start the race thinking that I might walk, but not, than to go into the race telling myself that I would not walk, but end up having to. By putting less pressure on myself, I was able to relax and keep a steady pace.

Post race in the concessions area was a MAD HOUSE. They ran out of Myoplex shakes so I grabbed an apple and an orange and got out of there as soon as I could. My appetite wasn't too big for the next couple of hours after the race, but I got really hungry around 7 pm and stayed hungry until I went to bed. I ate an apple, eggs, toast, popcorn, a turkey wrap with veggies, hummus, more apples, a piece of pizza, some candy, a piece of birthday cake, and then more candy. The end of the day turned out to be a sugar overdose for me so today I'm taking a break from sweets.

I'm a little sore today, so I went to my gym and sat in the steam room and also the hot tub for a while. Tomorrow I will probably do a bit of running and I hope the soreness will subside. Less than a week until the bridge run in Charleston!