Race Recap/past 10 days

Well, sometimes you have all your goals setup, have a good effort but still fall short.  Even with all indications pointing to success if you don’t close strong you might not meet your demands, and that is the lesson learned from the Chattahoochee Challenge 10-K.

As mentioned before I am trying to get a good qualifying time for the Peachtree Road Race this year so I can be just behind the main group of pros and seeded runners.  I am still transitioning from being a jogger to becoming a runner, and I think a sub 50 minute 10K time needs to be met before I can call myself a runner.  Not to mention that the cutoff time for the A group in the Peachtree is 49:59.  They are taking times from shorter races, but my official 5 mile time from last falls race was 39:47, and the cutoff at that distance is 39:44, so still a bit short, but mentally I really wanted that sub 50 minute 10K time.

The night before the race had a nice night out compliments of a babysitter, and got a good nights sleep.  This race has a fairly decent field, of the 890+ runners, somewhere close to 24% run under 50 minute times, and the winners came in around 32 minutes.  Race started well and I planned on negative splitting from 9 to 7 minute miles over the race to hit the magic 8 minute average needed.  Shortly after starting however I was passed by a pace setter and found out that he was running for the 49 minute mark.  I decided then to keep up with him and see how it felt.  After the first 2 miles I actually got out in front of him a bit, and by the 4 mile split I was ahead of my needed pace by almost a minute, and felt strong as well.  Closing in on the 5th mile the pacer caught up with me and I decided to bring it home with that group.  The problem popped up in the last half mile, when I realized we had only 3 minutes to go to break 50 minutes.  At that point I took off from the pacer (who I soon heard yelling “we need to pick it up!”) and went all out.  With the finish line in sight and about 2 minutes of 6 min pacing interval I was burning out and knew I would not make it.  I crossed the line ahead of the 49 minute pacer, but my time was 50:24 seconds so I just missed the cutoff time.

I was disappointed for missing the goal time, but also had to be happy with a PR time in a chip timed 10K.  I just needed 4 seconds per mile to cutoff enough to get under 50 minutes, close but that is how you learn to get better.  Somewhere in the last 2 miles my pace fell off even though my perceived effort was still the same  Overall I came in 30 of 101 in my age group (29th percentile), 176 of 472 in the men's division (37th percentile), and 222 of 890 overall (25th percentile).  I am happy with that and have one more shot in March to get to a sub 50 min time in a qualifying race.  Next time I will not eat Thai food and drink a few glasses of wine the night before!