Posts Tagged ‘CVKA 10k’

Today I ran my third 10k of the year — and just my seventh 10k ever — in 55:05. It was, in a word, horrible.

The heat and humidity were awful; I’ve dealt with stomach issues on and off for several days; did I mention that it was horrible?

I won’t beat myself up for this. In fact, nearly 12 hours after the fact, I realize even more that I had very little control over what happened today.

Without going into details of my problems since late Wednesday, there was really no way I could probably hydrate for this race. And a good pre-race meal or proper nutrition? Forget about it. OK, maybe I could have done a little better, but I had fought with food for a few days figuring out what would work best. In fact, last night I questioned whether or not I’d go to this race.

While I was running and slowing down mile by mile, I thought a lot about how I would prepare for an “A” race — one that I put it all on the line for — if I got sick the week of the race or the forecast called for highs in the low 90s. I don’t have a complete answer for that just yet, but you better believe I’ll be better prepared.

While this is a race I’d like to quickly forget, the lessons learned today will help carry me through the summer. That may be more valuable than actually have a solid performance.

I haven’t raced two 10ks in a year since 2007, both of which came within a few months of starting my blog. I’ve been pretty upfront at times that I just don’t like to race that distance — go out too fast and you’ll fall flat in the second half; start too slow and you can’t make up any time.

After I really pushed through all my miles Saturday, that way of thinking really doesn’t make sense. Plus, before this past weekend, I had only raced in five 10ks, with one of them being a wild off-road adventure, so that sort of doesn’t count. Simply put, I’m extremely inexperienced with 10ks.

So tonight I signed up for another 10k — the Central Virginia Kidney Association Memorial Day 10k, held in Lynchburg, Va. I ran this race in May2007, which was my first ever race report on the blog (which at the time was under a completely different name). Tonight is the first time I’ve looked at that post in a while — it’s great to read it and see where I’ve come since then.

As I take a brief look back, it gets me excited for what is to come. I know I’m a better runner than I was then, so I hope I can tackle those hills and beat my time of 49:49 back then. If the race was today, I’m not sure if I could. This course is drastically different than what I did this past weekend with some major hills — including a nice gradual uphill for probably about a half mile — so I have some work ahead of me in the next several weeks.

As I look ahead to the summer, I’m keeping my eye on local races that I’ve done in the past, including a 5 miler and a half marathon that I did last summer. While I will be focused on marathon training come July or so, I also want to focus on getting faster. Doing community races will help. For now, though, I’m focusing on this next 10k.