Saturday, June 19, 2010

A Tale of Two Ten-K's

I've been away from the blog for awhile, mainly because I've been super busy with everything else that is going on in my life. But I have kept up with the running. Mileage has been relatively low for the past five weeks, and I am just about to start ramping up again for the NYC marathon in November.

My approach to summer racing has been a carefree one. I know I am not going to PR in the heat, so I planned on running a lot of shorter races and just trying my best. I ran a two-mile race at the beginning of the month with an official time of 14:07. This was good enough for first place in my graduating class (it was a reunion event) and third overall female.

Last weekend I ran the Lawyers Have Heart 10K, and this weekend I ran the Red Cross "Run For the Red" 10K. I am pleased with my performance and effort levels at each of these races. For the Lawyers Have Heart race, this marked my 6th consecutive year at the event, and my 5-year anniversary of running a 10K. My primary goal was to finally break 50:00. I've broken 50:00 many times at 10Ks, but never in a summer race. If I couldn't do that, then at the very least I wanted to set a course PR, which would require beating the 50:59 I ran in 2007. Surely I am in better shape now! For today's 10K, my goal was to simply try my best. I thought that the course might be more challenging than last week's, so I wasn't setting any time expectations.



Mile

Pace

Avg. HR


Pace

Avg. HR

1

7:58

176


7:59

172

2

7:48

183


8:00

181

3

7:54

186


8:10

184

4

7:59

187


8:03

187

5

8:12

187


8:05

187

6

8:15

188


8:22

188

6.2

?

191


6:52

190

Okay, I just spent way too much time trying to format that table perfectly.

I feel like today's course was much more challenging and that I had to push harder. According to my heart rate, that's not exactly true. However, there is much more of a fade in the Lawyers race than there was in today's race. The only reason that the last mile is 8:22 was because about 1/4 of it was uphill. Not what you want to see at the end of the race. That speedy 6:52 was the downhill.



Anyway, the times were 49:50 in Lawyers (goal achieved!) and 50:13 in Run for the Red. I still think that I am more affected by the heat than most runners. I'm pleased with how I stuck it out and pushed hard in these races, and I think it will pay off when the fall comes and I start to care about PRs again.