GIVE N' GOBBLE 10K RACE REPORT

"The altitude on gmap-pedometer doesn't look too bad ... Honestly, it shouldn't be a problem."

-Thomas Graf, November 27th, 2013

How wrong I was. This ended up being much hillier than I expected when I was doing the preview and setting my goals. Honestly, I picked this race because I thought it would be flatter. Instead, it was the hilliest 10k I have run to date. I did, however, set a new PR. So I did very well.

The story of this race was kind of in the flavor of "death by a thousand paper cuts." There wasn't one or two big hills that you had to contend with, it was more of a constant onslaught of up and down with very few little flat sections. And they weren't little tee hee hee twenty foot inclines either, they were 40-60 foot climbs that were just freaking annoying.

Anyways, I got over to Sherwood High School at 8:20 and picked my bib and shirt up (free shirt for donating food). It was 36 degrees but I didn't really have time to go back to my car, so I kind of just bounced around and even took a little warm up jog. I ended up just putting the shirt I got over top the one I already had on. Nowhere else to put it and the extra warmth couldn't hurt.

The race started soon enough and I was feeling pretty good. I settled into the correct pace and was handling the hills at the start pretty well. My lungs were burning but my legs felt great the entire race. The really cold air didn't help the lung situation either. The race was fairly well put on... not the greatest direction at the 5k/10k split but if you were paying attention it was pretty clear.

During the second half of the race the hills started to add up. The fifth mile is what really killed me. Mostly uphill the entire way after getting worn down on the rollers leading up to it. Not fun. After that exhausting mile I really pushed the sixth and final mile and was proud I was able to run it so hard. The 5k walkers (mostly families, which was cool) did a very good job of staying out of the way, even when we merged onto a small trail.

The "already back to my car and realize I need
to take a picture" shot.

I sprinted into the finish and stopped my phone right at 45:00. D'oh! I was hoping for some relief with the "official time" but that ended up being the same right at 45 mintues. In retrospect that is a really awesome time for the course, but at the time I was kind of disappointed. I had a really bad side ache after I finished and kind of stumbled around the finish area for five minutes trying to catch my breath and settle that down.

Overall, I did a very good job. I'd say the hills were worth an extra 30-45 seconds on my time. I really ran this race hard and left it all out there. I'll look to do another 10k at some point in the future and actually maybe try to get a flat course this time, but until then, I'll be thrilled with a 56 second PR!

Overall Results: 45:00, 7:14/mile. 44/380 overall. 28/167 male, 8/29 M20-29.
Mile Splits: 7:02, 7:11, 7:12, 7:13, 7:38, 7:06.