Julie, Sylvan, and I traveled up to Junction City (about ten miles north) this morning for the Scandia Run 10K. I ran a great time despite not being in shape for a speedy race. I ran the second half faster than the first half, which is always a sign of a well-paced race. It’s also more fun that way. Here are my splits for the first six miles:
6:25, 6:29, 6:23, 6:20, 6:22, 6:27
How’s that for even splits?
38:25 for six miles (6:24 per mile average): 19:16 for the first three miles, 19:09 for the second three miles.
You may notice that there is no final 10K time above. (10K is 6.2 miles.) That’s the second “almost” in the title of this post. We took a little too long to get out of the house this morning, and I arrived at the race registration desk eleven minutes before the start of the race. They wouldn’t take my money, and I didn’t blame them. You have to cut people off sometime. I’d come to race, though, and I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity for a fast, flat, road 10K, so I jumped in at the start.
That’s right, I bandited. I’d never bandited a race before. I knew that I shouldn’t cross the finish line and mess up the race results, but I hadn’t ever thought about the etiquette of being a race bandit. About two miles in, I figured out a solution that worked for me. First, I wouldn’t take any water at the water stops. Second, I’d run hard until the six mile mark, then stop. I wouldn’t worry about the last 0.2 miles. The math is always a pain anyway.
I ran six miles fast, then stopped. It was great. I did note the finish time of the guy ahead of me, whom I would have caught if I had run the last quarter mile. He ran 39:35, 6:23 per mile. I would have been 38th out of 458 runners and second out of 26 in the men’s 30-34 age group.
And that projected finish time is the first “almost.” My fastest 10K ever was three years ago at the Scandia Run, 39:04. I was only thirty seconds off of that pace, and I was training pretty hard three years ago. This year, I’m consistently running about 10-20 miles a week.
Bonus running report: I also ran some mile repeats on the bark chip trail yesterday. I ran 6:23, then 6:15, then 5:45. Fun.