10k

Yesterday after the rock band gig, I ran three slow miles. Good pre-meet run. Felt great, didn't push anything. 24:00

Last night, I did homework for 4 hours, got pissed at the news, and went to bed with lots of crap running through my head. I was quite nervous about the race too. First one for almost two years.

Woke up this morning, excited, but still tired. Rode my bike to the bus stop, took the bus to base, and rode from the gate to the check-in. I had about an hour before the race began, so I got in a good shake out run (1 mile), stretched, and did all those silly loosening drills from high school.

The race developed smoothly. The runners with strollers started 5 minutes before the rest of us to reduce clutter. When the runners took off, some of the 5k people took off like a bat out of hell. That's always funny, because we, the 10k contenders, always end up passing them a mile in. When the 5k'ers split off to go back, we continued on the Hickam path.

It was weird racing on a route that I run regularly. I had decided not to mark splits, as I was more concerned about finishing than lap times. I only touched the watch three times: once at the start, once at the turn around, and at the finish line. Nobody was yelling splits either, which made my plan go smoothly. Just ran on placing.

Anyway, on the Hickam path, I saw several of the strollers in front of me. I just assumed that there were some other "free" runners ahead of me, so I kept reeling in runner after runner. Soon, I discovered some of them were just out for their daily run, not racing. Cool! At the turn around, I'd made up the 5 minute head start and passed the lead stroller. There was no one in front of me but the lead golf cart. Wait a minute. What? My first 10k in almost 2 years, and I'm leading?
A bit of panic hit me, then I stayed it with this thought, "Just have fun."

So I did. Whenever I felt like slowing down, I just remembered my previous post and kept digging for the right stuff to keep a steady cadence. With just over 2k left, some squirrely Asian kid flew by me. Wow! he was flying. Bless his heart, he did the same thing I used to do when overtaking someone. He looked over at me and said, "Good job, Man! C'mon, let's do this." I only smiled because it was all I could do to keep my breakfast down. (Explanation below).

No one else was close to us though, so I just kept my pace and watched him disappear down the road. He ended up finishing just over a minute ahead of me. Good kid.
The result? I ran 38:30, 2nd overall, 1st in my age group! Not bad for my first race in a long time, and with the goal of just finishing without throwing up. ;-)

You know that bubble/pressure feeling you get by the cardiac sphincter of the stomach when you are about to spill your guts? I had that feeling the last two miles. Good thing I didn't look at my watch, since I was running faster than I had for about 3 months. Ever since my ankle sprain, I'm been slowly working to get back. The run on Monday sucked, but was just enough to help me endure today's effort I suppose.

Total:
8 miles
50 push ups?
10 pull ups

*Footnote:
Taylor and Karl came up shortly after the race to max out. I didn't work out. I did about 50 pushups while they were testing, and 10 pull ups. We're doing the push up overloading next week to boost their performance. Should be fun. I didn't want to wait for the award...it was just tickets to a ball.