Race Report for 10km at the ChCh Marathon

Well first up yay I had a PB!! Wicked eh! First time ever under an hour so am pretty stoked with that. I looked back over some previous results earlier and the last 10km race result I can find was in 2006 and a did an hour and 9 mins so 58.15 is looking pretty damn sharp from where I'm sitting!

I had a funny old day yesterday, I was pretty excited to be racing again, there's something about race day that just gets me all fired up. I love it! I felt a bit nostalgic and envious heading out to the race. I live on course for the half and full marathon so when I saw all the cones out and the signs up down our street I really wished that I was doing the half marathon again this year like I have done for the past two years. Oh well, by doing the 10km I was able to see everyone else finish this time round which was nice.

Great weather for running, nice and cool and overcast! Yay for me cos I'm not really a fan of hot weather running. Managed to find Tanya and Nadia on the start line, not bad considering there were 4500+ of us there! That was cool and I was able to wish them luck for their races.

Geez it was a pretty congested start! Why do people feel the need to start up the front when they just can't run that fast? I spent a fair bit of time elbowing my way between people jogging along 2 abreast at a fairly staid pace. I managed to remember to hit the lap timer on my HRM at every km mark so that makes for pretty interesting reading now that I have downloaded it! I think the 9km marker must have been at the wrong place otherwise I did an uber-fast km followed by a terribly slow km.....

Was good to see a few friendly and familiar faces out on course spectating, Ginni, Zarnia and anyone else who was out there.

As I say it was a funny day, my goal was to go under an hour cos I have never done that before, I was quietly confident before the start of the race, I seemed to just know that I would do it which was scary and comforting all at the same time. I think I went out a bit hard at the start tho.... Had a really sore, tight stomach for the first few kms, kinda like stitch but not stitch, so had a bit of a walk just before the 5km drink station (I figured I would just say I was walking the drink station, that works right?), ummed and aahed about whether to take my GU that I had on me. Figured I may as well use it, I decided it wouldn't make me feel worse and may well make me feel better. So got that in and drank a cup of water from the drink station and jogged off again. Geoff and his family were at the 5km turn around (that way they got to see all of us, Geoff's brother Pete and g/friend Jill were doing the half marathon) that was nice to have a friendly wave and smile at halfway! Geoff was cute the night before, he came up to say good night after I had gone to bed and was telling me that I would have an awesome race and called me his champion runner. He told me my running was looking really good at the moment, I thought this was quite amusing as I couldn't remember when he had last seen me run so I asked him about that and he reckons he sees me all the time when he is heading off somewhere or driving home in his car. That was cute and nice that he mentioned it, it's always good to get some positive reinforcement before race day.So from the 5km mark I needed to have wee walks every km, they were just wee, just a hundred metres or so, unlike in the past when I have had to literally walk half a km at a time. From 5km I knew unless something really drastic happened I would breeze in under an hour so that was cool. Just before the final corner this girl behind me burst into tears and saying to the person she was running with that she couldn't do it and wasn't go to make it. I turned around and ran with her a bit and encouraged her along, she picked up and had a huge sprint finish which was cool, seeing her got me all choked up tho and when I turned to go up the finish straight I couldn't get a decent breath which wasn't good. Managed to sort myself out tho and cruised on up and over that line!

So an interesting day, not a perfect race but still a PB which is always great :)

Quote of the Day:

One of the best ways to measure people is to watch the way they behave when something free is offered.

- Ann Landers