Vulcan 10k. New 10k PR!!

Date: Saturday 11/1/2008
Distance Ran : 6.24 miles
Total Time : 01:01:49 (1 hours 1 minutes 49 seconds)
Pace: 9:53/mi
Run Time : 8:00 am
Weather : Cold Start, Warmer Finish. Clear. 50° at run

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The Vulcan 10k! This was my first "big" race and it was a blast. It took a while for me to get in the groove and the first 1/2 of the race was much harder than the 2nd half for me both mentally and physically. My overall pace was much quicker than my usual races and I'm bordering on being below a 10:00/mi pace which is a goal I set for myself a while ago but didn't think I'd see so soon.

The Run was alot of Fun. Jeremie was in town to do some packing and moving so he, myself, and Will got downtown pretty early. Much earlier than we needed to in hindsight. We could have very easily showed up an hour after we got downtown and still had time to warm-up and be ready. But I had never been to a race this big and figured that if you had a few thousand people showing up to a race it'd be jam packed really early.

My legs actually held up. There were a few twinges early that had me going "here we go" but it never got worse or consistent. I did alot pre-stretching and maybe that was the trick, hard to tell.

I mentally had to really struggle to take every step that first 4 miles. Actually the first mile went pretty well because it was very much the "Wow, look at all the runners, this is a big race, hey look we just finished a mile" race blur. After that wore off and we turned the corner on to 6th Avenue (?) we had almost a 1 mile straight away laid out before us and that was really when I hit my first mini-wall. I really had to struggle through the run until we got into Highlands and then it was difficult but I knew I was getting closer. Between Mile 3 and Mile 4 was my slowest time and that was by far the hilliest and most difficult portion. When I hit the 4 mile mark I was off my pace, but after that I got back into southside and knew I was getting closer to the end. I really hit my second wind between mile 4 and the end of the race and was having a great time running.

I didn't have any real after-race soreness or issues other than one toe on my right foot felt like I dropped something on the nail. I kept waiting for it to bruise up and be "black nail" or whatever they call that alilment. But it never did and was better on Sunday.

Overall, this was a great race and I'm very happy with my progress and finish. It's races like this that make me think that maybe, just maybe, I can actually train for a marathon successfully.

I'm still going to continue with my pre-training for the Shamrock in March. I'm hoping I can get all the weekday runs in this next week unlike last week. We'll see how daylight savings affects my running.