Friendly Sons of St. Patrick 10K Race Report

Today the Catholic boys were holding a race kind of in my neighborhood. I've been eyeing this one for awhile since I've never done a 10k (instant PR), it was close to home and pretty cheap, and I need the miles as I start to ramp up for Dam to Dam at the end of May (20k). How can you beat an 11am start and a t-shirt? Although I'm guessing they might have expected me to be in church beforehand. :P

I've been having some major GI issues the last couple of days. I'll spare the play by play, but suffice it to say that it was touch and go up until the end and heavy pharmaceuticals were on board. Thank you science.

Art heard I was running this and we arranged to meet up at registration. He told his group he was looking for a girl and they said, "well, maybe we can help, what does she look like?" Art said to look for red lipstick and one of them spotted me from across the parking lot. :D That's so much better than look for a girl with really wide hips. :P

I think the plan was loosely something like we'd love to run this in the 11's, but realistically we need to just keep each other going, and if someone is having a great day, don't be afraid to go with it. I secretly thought I'd be the lag behinder in the 12's.

We started out at a nice clip and did some chatting. I got a side stitch during mile 2 and Art had to one sidedly chat. After that, the gradual inclines started and kept going through mile 3, 4 and 5!! Those damn sons ain't so friendly. I was breathing heavier than normal but nothing hurt and we just kept going. I kept telling myself, this is a race, okay to push yourself and be breathing heavier. Art was really a dear, I know he could have gone a lot faster, but he claimed he really wanted to run about this pace and not over do it. He has been sick and was also concerned about breathing but he ran it seemingly effortlessly. Thanks, Art!!! You totally ROCK.

I had two pretty good lines for the sparse talking. "Jesus Christ!" (then, started thinking, is that weird to say J.C. during this race? It's probably not a very good thing.) My other one was, "I'd talk more, but all I can think of are cuss words." hee hee.

As we went on and we continued to keep it under 12, I was hoping to do it for every mile. You can see that the only water station during mile 5 kept me from that goal. Somewhere around 5.2, I set Art free and he moved out. He was yelling, "run your race." ~ "you're doing great!" ~ "I'll be at the finish, you'll be right behind me."

1 ~ 11:02
2 ~ 11:34
3 ~ 11:50
4 ~ 11:37
5 ~ 12:01
6 ~ 11:56
.27 ~ 10:26
Garmin reads 6.27 miles ~ 1:12:49 ~ 11:37 pace
(wow - race site says 1:12:52 - for once my garmin trigger finger was right on.)

Once again it was one of those really bittersweet things. Absolutely great to be running, great to be running with someone, great to be running 6 miles and nothing hurts much, great to be running this pace for 6 miles, great to be experiencing improvement, beautiful day to be running. I'm still at the back of the back of the pack. (there were officially only 6 people behind me and I was 24th of 26 in my age group. Geez.) I just don't look back. I'm extremely pleased.