Race Report: Run with Heart 10K

 

I ran my first 10K on October 8th with a time of 44:05, closing with a 6:59 last mile as pictured in my watch above.

The race, "Run with Heart" in Urbana OH, was a beautiful little event on an out-and-back bike path course. I started about 30 seconds late - the watch time would probably not match an official race time, but I don't think they were taking official times. After working my way through the crowd, I ran with a couple guys for half a mile or so before passing them to move into second place.

I stayed in second, well behind the eventual winner, for the remainder of the race. Miles 4 and 5 were tough and I slowed from low 7s to around 7:15 in those miles. My first and last miles were both right around 7 flat. 

Considering that I came into the race with no training since the first week of September, I was happy with the result. Sub-44 was my goal after I hit the turn at 21:54 but the fitness wasn't quite there (unsurprisingly). I can't recall for sure if I had run over 5 miles since my 50 miler in March. So I'm treating the race as a baseline, and I look forward to making improvements in both running and burpee training. 

Looking forward, I plan to target a winter and a spring race. Perhaps a winter half marathon followed by a spring 10K. A few weeks' steady training should be more than enough to get under 44 - and 6 months from now I'll probably be looking for sub-43. Getting all the way under 40 would be great one day, and I could do that fairly easily back in the college days, but those were in very different times for me. 

More immediately, I'll be racing my father in a trail 800 meter race this week, which will be another chance to test the speed on the legs as well as exercise the anaerobic system a little more.

We'll see how things go! I've caught the racing bug and am excited to see what's next.