Compared with yesterday's heat, this morning was almost letter-perfect! The race didn't start till 8:30 (by which time yesterday I was almost finished with my 16 mile run with Runner's Edge of the Rockies), and it was much cooler than 24 hours ago--although it was a bit sticky and humid. I knew that would slow me down a bit, but I still felt confident that I'd have a good race, and stand a good shot of beating last year's 31:48. But when I went for a warmup jog, I was alarmed to feel some stiffness in my right ankle! I was very upset by this because, after a bad week of running due to pain in that ankle, yesterday's run had been entirely pain free! I held myself to about a 10 minute pace for a short warmup jog, and concentrated on keeping my weight forward a little bit. This combination seemed to alleviate the mild discomfort in my ankle, so I immediately revised my goal for today: I planned to run by feel, hoping just to have a solid race at that pace which I felt I could maintain without exacerbating my ankle issues.
This was actually the first race in some time that I was going to run entirely by feel, as I did not have my Garmin with me. Not by choice: the charging cradle chose yesterday to malfunction, and so I wasn't able to charge the Garmin's battery, which had drained itself on yesterday's run.
It turned out to be kind of an interesting experience, running without knowing how fast I was going. I used to have a pretty good idea of what a 10 minute pace felt like, or 9 or 8 or even 7. Basically it was based on my perception that an 8-minute mile was painful, and difficult to sustain for more than 1 or 2 miles; that anything faster was borderline excruciating; that 9 was what my coach refers to as "comfortably hard;" and that 10 was relaxed and easy. However, as I've improved over the last year and gotten stronger, my perceptions have shifted. Now an 8 minute mile is a pace I can easily sustain for a 5k, although it's still an effort to hold that for a 10k. A 9-minute mile, which is what I'm going to have to run at Chicago in October, is now a pace I can sustain for much longer distances. But I haven't quite adjusted to the different feeling yet.
Here's what I'm talking about: I knew the first mile was going to be slow, and anticipated that the whole thing probably would be, due to the care I was taking with my ankle. Without my Garmin I had no way of knowing, but it felt like I was running about a 10-minute pace for the first mile. After that mile, the stiffness in my ankle went away, and I felt good enough to increase my pace, pushing to what felt like a 9-minute mile, a pace that I sustained for the rest of the race. But, instead of crossing the finish at about 37 minutes, I was closer to 35:15! Turns out, if I'm right about the first mile taking 10 minutes, I ran closer to 8:30 for the rest of the race. It wasn't a PR, but a very satisfying race, especially given how fatigued I still was today after yesterday's long run.
My younger sister was there, too, running her first 4-mile race. I talked her into it after she finished the Bolder BOULDER last year: "It's 2.2 miles less than what you just did! Piece of cake!" I also saw Susan B and Bill McD from Runner's Edge, who also ran the race, as well as Bret S who was there taking pictures after his own 16 mile run that morning. Smart guy, that Bret, avoiding yesterday's heat!
Official Time: 35:18
YTD Race Miles: 103
YTD Total Miles: 599
Thanks, Bret: The pictures look great as always!
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