Chris - 6.2

I wasn't nearly as excited for this race as I was for the 5k last weekend, but that worked in my favor as I slept more soundly. I found out before I left in the morning that there were only 50 ppl signed up for the 10k (and only one guy in my age group), so I memorized his # so I could look for him and see if I had a chance to beat him. Was a little annoyed after I got there, because the first bus was supposed to leave at 7:30 (race start at 8:30), but it didn't pull away until almost 7:50. This means I had to sit in a stupid little schoolbus seat with my knees in my face all cramped and uncomfortable for much longer than I wanted to. But we made it there and I ran a couple warm up laps and decided to concentrate more on stretching this time around. In case I didn't mention before, the race went from my old HS rival's institution and ended at my old HS - Tigard High. Here's an approximate map of the course. I'm pretty sure they even changed it from the one I was looking at originally, but whatever.

We had chip timers for the race, which for some reason I'm not a fan of. Just one more thing to tie onto my shoelaces besides my car key I guess. Anyway, I lined up a couple people back at the start line. The guy that was my age was standing right next to me, but once the gun went off he got out in front with two other guys and I realized pretty quickly that I had no chance to beat him. So it was just me against my old PR and goal for the day: breaking 41. I swear, every first mile I never feel like I'm running as fast a pace as I end up doing. First mile was 6:19. Not terribly below my target pace I guess. Knee was feeling fine at the start, but slowly started to bother me. Not too bad though, and actually as the race wore on it went away completely! A short cute girl in tight spandex shorts passed me doing a pretty good clip between mile 1 and 2, and I tried my best not to be distracted, haha. Second mile in 6:23. I was starting to feel the burn, but kept up my pace pretty well I thought. I accidently took a wrong turn when we went into the bike paths under the railroad tracks, but there was a fence around some construction stuff so I figured that out pretty quick and cut across back to the path. After the girl passed me, I was all alone for a good while. I glanced back and the next guy was maybe 50 yards away. Passed the 3rd mile marker at 6:32. I'm not sure what happened after that, because my next split was 6:58. But right before the 4th mile marker the two guys that had been a ways behind me had caught up and were breathing in my ear. I kept them from passing as we went around the bends of the bike path as we ran towards Cook Park. They definitely pushed me to run faster, as my next split was 6:50. One of the guys was breathing pretty hard so it was easy to hear where he was. One cool thing that happened - my church was doing a 'sermon in the park' today, and as I rounded a corner going into the parking lot I saw a bunch of people I knew and waved and this lady I know goes "and there's Chris!" and they all started cheering for me. After we did an out & back through Cook Park (not shown on my map) the breathing hard guy started to pass me a little as we came up toward the steep and short Cook Park hill. I noticed he was listening to an iPod and had on a little black headband that was tied behind his head. I said to myself "I'm going to kick your ass on this hill". And I sure did! He had a good couple steps on me as we started going up, and by the top I had passed him and put myself a few steps ahead of him. My legs felt fairly rubbery as the road flattened out and went towards my old HS, so I prayed that my energy would come back quickly so I could put a little more distance between myself and this iPod guy. Didn't come back as quickly as I would've liked, but as I heard him start to get closer to me that was all the motivation I needed to stride out a bit more and hold him off. Passed the 6 mile marker at 7:20, which irritated me but I guess it was slow due to the hill. After that there was a straightaway along the front of the school and I really kicked it in and left that guy behind. We turned right into the parking lot by the swim center and ran toward the soccer field, with the finish right there under a white blowup archway. Ran the last .2 in 1:10 for a total time of 41:35! Didn't get my personal goal, but I felt like I ran a pretty good race - and I beat my old PR by 2+ minutes.

I decided to stick around for the awards ceremony, which was after the 5k and 1 mile fun run/walk. I ended up seeing my buddy Dan's cousin Kelly, who was running the 5k, so I chatted with her and her stepdaughter while we waited for the ceremony and ate free bagels and little sandwiches and cinnamon rolls. I also picked up the awesome Alan Webb poster shown above from a Nike table that was set up in front of an awesome VW bus that was decked out in Prefontaine images and quotes. I ended up finishing 8th out of 77 in the 10k. I guess I could've gone up and gotten a participation ribbon for 2nd place in my age group, but the guy read my name off quick with some other people's, and I didn't feel like claiming a ribbon for something I won by default.