The Tarheel 10 Miler Race Report

Happy Saturday Peeps!

I ran my 10 miler today. Here are the deets:

Temp: low 50's and misty rain at the start.
Goal: 1:07
Did: 1:09:0X
Elevation and reason for tank: 955 feet.

While my time wasn't stellar I am super proud for a few reasons:

1. I wanted to quit at several times during the race. I couldn't handle my bizarro SPLITS. It was emotionally wrecking to have so many hills. I was either running 6:30 pace on downhills or 7 pace on the uphills. I am a stickler for even splits so this killed me! But I kept going so victory there.

2. I was 10th female out of 3500 runners and 2nd Age Group.

3.There was a 1-mile uphill "challenge" from mile 8-9. I was able to recover and bring it back to 6:34 pace once it leveled off.

4. I didn't live out my fantasy of throwing myself in a gutter or faking a ham pull for a DNF. hehe

So all and all I'm okay with my performance. I had changed up my taper a bit and ran the 2 days prior. Normally, I never run right before. But I will say my legs felt good. I didn't have that stale feeling like I do after a longer taper.

As for the race itself I was a little annoyed that they ran a 4-miler on the 10 miler course which slammed me into walkers and 10 minute pace people from mile 6.5 through 9. There wasn't any direction to keep slower people to the right. So there was a lot of shoving and I jumped up on the curb once because there wasn't any other way around people.

I also changed my pre race ritual. Today I drank a red bull shot and another one of those Gatorade Prime slurpy things. I didn't drink or take any nutrition during the race. I was fine there. Normally, I take a "pre-race" vitamin pack and some espresso. I ran out of vits. No biggie.

I wore my Zensah compression leg sleeves. I know they helped. I should have had major calf burning on those hills. Instead just a fresh leg feeling. I love those things.

Here's the swag:

that's a beer glass and football...uhhh I'm guessing a GUY chose this stuff!

Now, it's time to search Active.com for the next one! Thanks for all the virtual high 5's over the last few days. When the going got tough I would think:

"Katie from Run for the Bikini would probably stop and do 20 pull ups now! Keep going, keep going, no push ups needed!"
"Benny from Texas would probably cut my time in half with 105 degree heat blazing in his face!"
"Coach Dion would probably turn this into a 30 miler and have it done by 6am!"

So thank you guys!! On to the next one!!

Cheers!
Laura