What a quiet week. Only one race. Last week was three (Tuesday Night Crit, Kits Challenge, and EV Warp Speed TT). Next week is three again (Tuesday Night Crit, Provincial TT Champs, Walnut Grove Triathlon). So it was a bit of a nice break.
Martina and I made the trip up to Squamish on Sunday for the Logger Days 10 k run. It would be a good chance to see if my running was finally coming around as I wanted before heading to Kelowna. Looking at previous results it didn’t look like there was usually a strong field but this year it was part of the Lower Mainland Road Race Series so it might attract more runners. And sure enough it did.
With a race time temperature of 24 degrees and the humidity high enough to feel like 30, I knew it was going to be a challenge to run my best. Workouts had shown me that I should be capable of running a 37:30 but with the heat and lack of 10k’s lately I was shooting to just break 38 minutes.
As with most run races, right off the gun, most took off quickly and I soon found myself behind about 30 runners. But I knew my pace and wasn’t going to panic. Sure enough, even before the 1 km marker I was slowly passing runners who had begun to slow one by one. Hitting the 1 km marker in 3:50 (38:20 pace) I knew I was right where I wanted to be. I was completely in control, relaxed and breathing easy.
As I was slowly passing runners I noticed that one runner just 10 m up the road was doing the same at pretty much the same pace as me. So I decided to put in a little surge and bridge up to him by the 2 km mark. Together we ran until the turn around point at 5 km ticking off the km’s at bang on 3:50 pace.
It was just after the turn around that I heard footsteps behind us and then a runner coming past us. He was definitely running faster than us (obviously had picked it up after the half way point) and started to get a gap on us. At this point I figured if I wanted to get under 38 minutes I was going to have to make a move so I surged again to bridge up to this faster runner.
Together we started reeling in and passing a few runners. He was definitely running a faster pace as a couple of times he nearly dropped me but I fought back to stick with him. Obviously at this point it was no longer comfortable and worrying about my pace was out the window. My only goal was to stick with him as long as I could.
With a km to go, either he started to pick it up more or I finally cracked a little and he started to pull away from me. So I struggled through the final kilometre, thinking there might be someone coming from behind and finished 15th overall in a time of 38:20 (exactly 3:50 per km pace in the end). And as is custom, finished just off the podium in my age group in 4th.
Overall, a good race. Nothing spectacular but I ran a well paced race and in the end don’t think I could have run any faster in those conditions. As well, it’s a 10 km PB by over a minute. But the question now is can I run that off the bike in a triathlon. That’s what the next couple of weeks will be about.
Finally, congrats to Martina on winning the women’s race by over a minute even if it wasn’t the time you were looking for. I think you can call yourself a runner now.
