I don't think I've ever been this relaxed going into a run as I was for this year's Autumn Breeze 10K yesterday. I had not been running as much as I had wanted because of my Achilles tendon soreness, trying to take it easy and not make things worse because I could have run on it too much. I had decided to just run the way I always had, with 8-minute miles, and if the heel flared up I would just bow out of the run and walk back to the truck. Basically no pressure to perform...just a workout as part of getting ready for the Louisiana Trails half-marathon in three weeks.
It was a great morning for a run...cool, lots of people talking and laughing. I heard there were over 500 registered by Friday afternoon for the various runs of 10K, 5K, and a 5K walk. I spoke to Frank, or as we know him by his nickname "Deuce", who is 57 years old and races on our bike team. He had crashed at last weekend's Tour de FireAnt ride...you probably read about that in my earlier post...and was still sporting the scabs from the skin he lost on his left arm and knee. Like me, he was wanting to do a relatively easy run so we both decided to try for that 8 minute pace and not get too eager to go too fast when the gun goes off.
When we started the pace was kinda what I wanted: just above the pace I wanted but not that fast. In fact, I felt pretty comfortable for the first mile while I was weaving between and around the slower runners in front of me on the jogging trail alongside the Fant Parkway. I figured I was in the first 40-50 runners making my way up a bit at a time. Of course, there was no way I could catch the leaders...those guys are just too fast and were already a couple of hundred meters ahead of me. When we passed the Mile One marker, my watch said 7:22 which surprised me because I didn't feel I was going that fast. I thought I better slow it down to last for the entire 6.2 miles. At two miles I caught up to Daniel who is training for Ironman Florida coming up in three weeks. He was probably going to do more miles after this particular run so he wasn't exactly pushing it. We talked a minute and I let him set the pace through this neighborhood the course took us through. Then Deuce caught up to us and the three of us had put a really good gap on the runners behind...we were probably in the top thirty by now. Deuce and I ran behind Daniel, and I decided I was going to try to keep up for as long as I could. But the pace still didn't feel that particularly hard...I was feeling no pain at all from my Achilles which was very good.
At three miles, I told Deuce that we were at a 7:15 pace...we had gotten faster! He said he didn't know if he could hold that and I replied I wasn't sure I could either. But we kept going, following Daniel who was only 10-15 feet in front. We got to a turnaround near downtown at 3.5 miles back onto the jogging trail, heading on a return to the start at Stoner Boat Launch. Now we could see who was behind us as we passed each other on the trail. When Daniel's wife Elka came past, he dropped off to run in with her so that left Deuce and I on our own. The only runner we could see in front was about 150 meters ahead and I figured the two of us were about an equal distance in front of whoever was behind us. He stayed about 10 feet in front of me and I never could close the distance but I really didn't care if I did or not. When we got to the finish, he came across 3.5 seconds before I did and we were really pleased with our runs!
I finished the 6.2 miles in 45:13.7 which is about 26 seconds slower than I did it last year when I was running more! I came in 28th overall out of the 168 folks who did the 10K distance. I was fairly happy and my Achilles didn't complain once although it would be aching later in the day. Got 6th place in the 50-54 age group (there's a lot of older fast distance runners around here...17 of the top 30 were over the age of 40!). The pace for the entire distance turned out to be a 7:18 per mile, way faster than I intended but I'll take it!
Jonnene had to work this weekend but we went out later in the day to do some shopping and rent a DVD to watch. Pretty much a mellow day after the run.
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