Burnsville 10K Recap

Heart of the City 10K

 September 6, 2014 

Triathlon season and summer have come and gone.  I’ll say it was a success.  After the Lake Marion triathlon I had to sit down and decide what was going to be next.  The fall schedule ends up looking like this:

                Heart of the City 10K,        9/ 6/2014

                Surf the Murph,               10/25/2014

                Moustache Run,               11/29/2014.

I chose the Heart of the city 10k in Burnsville to make-up for the 10K race that I dropped in May (due to injury and illness).  I can’t say it was a big deal of a race, but I wanted to check the 10K of my list of races.  Surf the Murph is a 25K trail run that takes place 2 miles from my house.  It sounds fun; it’s really close; I couldn’t resist.  It’s listed as having 25K, 50k or 50 mile race options.  The length depends on if you do one, two or three loops of the course.  The distances actually work out to be about 16.7 miles, 33.4 miles and 50 miles (25K=15.5 miles, 50K=31miles), but I guess 25K and 50K just end up looking better.  The Moustache Run is a half marathon.  It seems like a good next challenge.  I’ll have to pack on quite a few miles in the next couple months, but this will bring me closer to the races that I actually want to run. 

I don’t think I’ll ever be fast.  Also, I don’t care if I’m ever fast.  Instead of working towards increasing my speed, I have chosen to shoot for increasing my distances.  I’ll shoot for the half marathon this year, maybe Olympic triathlons next year and sooner or later hit the long races (marathon, 70.3…).  It’s a lofty goal, but I’m not on any time limit.  Maybe it will be a few years before I hit a marathon; maybe it will be five or six years before a 70.3 triathlon, but it’s something to shoot for and it’s something to keep me engaged. 

Leading up to the race, I was averaging runs of about 3.9 miles with a pace of about 8:50.

My time breakdown and predicted reactions were as follows:

                Over 1:00             Failure
                0:58-1:00              At least I did it.
                0:56-0:58              Good enough
                0:54-0:56              Happy
                0:52-0:54              Awesome
                Under 0:52          Able to retire as champion of the world

Pre-Race

The t-shirt for the race was a black long sleeve run shirt.  It’s pretty nice. I’ll probably wear it a lot because it says 5K/10K, and it’s not going to be often that I am on the long course for a race.  I drove the course after picking up my packet the day before the race.  The first mile is all downhill and the second is pretty flat.  After that, there is a gradual uphill that runs for quite a while, and the last couple miles are mostly flat with a finishing downhill.  The race is about ten minutes from my house, so the 7:30 start time made for a leisurely morning and commute.

Race

Goal:     Don’t leave anything in the tank.
Actual:  I didn’t time it quite right.
I knew the first mile was all downhill, so I decided to try to light it up and see what kind of mile split I could hit.  My Garmin said I went out in 7:46.  I was actually hoping for a little quicker, but I shouldn’t complain.  There were only 78 people signed up for the 10K, so it felt like I ran much of the race on my own.  The race was largely uneventful, which isn’t a bad thing.  It was a nice quiet run. 

At one point, I was running down a curved street and I could hear someone coming up to pass me.  It just so happened that I was running by a “No Passing” street sign at that moment.  As the runner came up on me, I pointed to the sign and said “Obey the rules of the road!”  Once he got past me, I noticed that he was wearing ear buds.  I’m assume he didn’t hear me.  To him, I probably just looked like a crazy person waving their arms running down the street.  It’s a shame when a good joke goes to waste.

Anyhoo, my full mile splits were

                Mile 1    7:46
                Mile 2    8:21
                Mile 3    8:43
                Mile 4    9:03
                Mile 5    9:08

                Mile 6    8:32

Around the final corner and on the downhill to the finish line I kicked it up a little, but it was too late.  I should have picked it up sooner; I had a lot left in the tank after the finish line.  My Garmin had the last bit as 0.34 miles.  That seems like a big difference from 6.2.  Anyhoo, my pace on the last bit was 7:51. 

Race Time:  54:17 with an 8:44 pace 

Post-Race

I was a little bummed that I didn’t break 54:00, but I was close enough to be happy.  Surf the Murph is up next month.  I’ll have to add some distance to my training.  I’m going to try to stick to adding no more than 10% to my run total each week. That’s what a lot of the sites use as a guide.  We’ll see how it goes.