Arts Fest 10K

This was a grueling test. The air was thick and heavy from the humidity even at that early hour. When the sun would peek out from behind the clouds, it was draining.
The race was big, big, big: by combining the 5K and the 10K, I’d heard that there were almost 1,000 runners at the start. (Turns out it was more like 650.) I moved up near the front of the pack, so I wouldn’t get boxed in like last year.
My goal was just to hold my eight-minute mile pace. With the heat and humidity, and the constant rolling of hills, I figured that would be hard enough. But I went out way too fast: I did the first mile in 7:19, and the second in about 7:40. I was feeling very good running though, but I backed off my pace as I climbed the hill at Shortlidge Road.
There was a water stand at about the 2.5-mile mark, but I decided to wait, thinking there would be another later on in the course. A lot of my fellow 10K-ers did the same. It turned out that there was supposed to be one, but somehow it never got set up.
I crossed the half-way mark in 24 minutes even. If I had been running just 5K, I would have been under 23 I think. (24 minutes would have put me fourth in my age group in the 5k.) I backed off during the third mile, because when I bonked on Tuesday it had been right around the fourth mile.
Not today, although I admit that I found myself struggling a bit during the 3rd and 4th miles, especially as I started up the hill at Corl Street. But once we made the turn onto the golf course, I found my legs again as we climbed the hill. As I finished the 5th mile, my pace quickened, and I started passing people again. This last mile and a half had a bunch of short, steep hills which reminded me of the courses I used to run back in high school.
One guy didn’t want me to pass him: he picked up his pace as I got along side him. But on the last downhill I took it up another notch and attacked, leaving him behind, then cranked it up the last hill, digging in and passing people who I’d been trying to catch for miles.
As I passed the 6-mile mark, I was stride for stride with this redheaded girl who I think was on her high school team. There was a guy on the sideline who sounded like her coach, telling her to pick up her knees, etc. She pulled away from me with about a tenth of a mile to go, and I could not go with her; I just had no kick. Another guy passed me in about the last 25 meters, which almost never happens. It was weird: I felt like I could have kept running for many more miles, but I just couldn’t go any faster. Which again reminded me of high school.
I finished in 49:46, which makes my pace 8:01. And I felt at the end the satisfaction of knowing I had done that race as well as I could.

The official results are here.