It's Been A Long Time...

Whew, such an interesting day. The 17 hour training day crew (+Tyler) ran a 10K today. Steve wanted to make sure that we were keeping on top of our speed since we have been smashing the long distances this winter. He wanted us to all throw down a great 10K, and I was secretly thinking "How"? I should have known not to question him. He's been talking about me breaking 40 in the 10K, and being that my PR was 41:52, I was like UhHuh, yea, I'll get right on that.

This morning I woke up feeling like I wanted to sleep in. But, I got up, got ready, and ate a banana. I made several trips down to the car and my legs were yelling at me going up the stairs. I figured I didn't need those muscles anyways, it's a relatively flat course.

Troy, Annie and I arrived at the Platte River Bar and Grill at 7:50. The race was $10 and had about 100 people in it. Where can you find that in Denver? Kinda cool. We did about a three mile warm up, I threw on my flats (for the first time this year), and off the troupe went.

The first mile was pain, but I settled into a groove. One lady took off at a really strong pace and I could tell she was quite a bit stronger than me. The third place girl seemed not quite as fast so I knew it was a day to just run my own race rather than to race others. I settled into a strong pace. As we passed the mile markers they seemed short and my times seemed fast. But, I was also running too fast to do good math, so I figured I was just confused.

We came back by the start/finish at mile 4 and that was brutal. I don't like running by the finish. It's tempting to stop. But on I went. Mile 5 I really tried to run strong. I kept repeating "The fifth mile is where it's at". Don't really know why, but that's what came into my head. It was fun to see Tony running strong over on the other side of the river, on his way to the finish. When we crossed the cones at mile 5 I glanced at my watch and was totally confused. Almost 7 minutes? Turns out this mile was long. Mile 6 was another long one, and the last 0.2 took almost 2 minutes, so a little long as well.

The course overall was an even 6.19 via Tylers Garmin, but the mile markers ranged from 0.88 to 1.2, so a little tough to pace with that.

I was pretty excited to cross the line at 40:47. My first thought was "Oh, it's just short". But after seeing Tyler (and others) Garmins, I was pretty excited. An actual 10K, which means...a nice PR today.

So, wow, one week of track, and a million LONG LONG miles this winter and my speed has held. I feel like I am faster, and I also feel like sub 40 is in my future. Very good gauge today (and mental boost)!