The weather forecast leading into Sunday was to expect 60 degrees at race time. Considering this was warmer than I usually run in, I was a little apprehensive about this. However, the forecast changed Saturday. At race time, it was mid to high 40s at best, and there was a considerable SE wind, at least 15 mph. The other apprehensive fault (where things can go bad) was that the race crossed 75th Street twice, which even for a Sunday morning, does have considerable traffic. However, on Saturday, I noticed signs on many streets that said that roads would be closed from 8 -11 aM on Sunday. When I arrived at about 7AM (for an 8 AM start time), there were already many volunteers on hand. Many. This would be a well organized, well run race.
There was a 5K starting with the 10M race, and it was unclear how many 10M runners there were. Well, most of the runners ahead of me were 10M runners. At the 5K turnaround, I only saw a few runners heading back. About 70% of the course was through the Greene Valley Forest Preserve. Ok, maybe 60%. There was about a mile along Greene Road, that separates the two parts of the Forest Preserve. In the 5th mile, another runner came up alongside me and asked if I had run here before. When I said yes, he responded that he never realized it was so hilly. I told him that the worst was over, the rest of the course would be on the east side of Greene Road and that segment was mostly flat.
I'll try to enter my split times tomorrow. The first mile was faster than it seemed, at 7:50, but my Garmin had the distance right on. The second mile was in 8:05 but the third mile was 8:46. Now, without a Garmin, I would have thought the mile markers to be off. It was the elevation changes that caused the variances. And the race would continue like that - I'd see an 8:40 then an 8:05 with no real change in effort.
I was hitting my targets, not necessarily for every mile but every set of miles. I was exhausted by mile 8. At some point, my Garmin lost the signal for about a short time, so I was tracking short. At the finish, I recorded 9.96 miles. When I loaded the data into SportsTracks, it calculated the distance as 10.06.
My final time was 1:24:19, well ahead of my stretch goal. So, I have to be happy with that race. I finished 12 out of 16 in my age group (a tough group) and 65th overall out of 138. I was feeling sore this morning, so i ran a recovery 6 miles in just under 55 minutes. I expect to feel that way all week.
