This content originally appeared on text/plain and was authored by ericlaw
After last year’s disappointing showing at the Capitol 10K, I wanted to do better this time around.
We left the house at 6:47; traffic was light and we pulled into my regular parking spot at 7:09. It was a very chilly morning at 42F with a bracing breeze, so I wore my running tights, making sure to Body Glide everywhere to avoid a repeat of the miserable Austin Half chafing. I headed over to the start line and had a productive stop at the porta-potties on the way. The B corral was completely packed by the time I arrived so I had to wait outside of the queue until it drained up to the start line. My Coros watch successfully streamed music to one earbud for the whole race.
Compared to last year, I started out slower: this year, my pace to the 2 mile split was 9:18 while it was 8:58 last year. But this time, I kept running throughout and finished the first 5K 1:26 faster, and finished the overall race 6:33 faster; still 7:17 below my fastest, but under my goal.
I probably should’ve been running a bit faster throughout, but by far the most important factor was that I only dropped to a walk a few times, and usually for only 30 seconds or so. This year, I didn’t recognize the start of the “KQ Hill” (usually there’s an obvious counting cable you run over) so I didn’t run as hard as I might have otherwise. But I ran the whole hill, and the following hills as well.
Over the years, I’ve gotten in the bad habit of dropping to a walk when things seem hard (“Oh, I’ll walk until the next street light“) but I battled that in this race in two ways — by delaying myself by setting the target in the distance (“I’ll start walking when I pass the next street light“) and by avoiding excuses by keeping my heart rate under control for the whole race:
Unlike most past races, my pace was more consistent throughout:
All in all, it wasn’t my best performance, but I had fun with it. After the race, I wandered around the post-race expo (which I had entirely overlooked last year, oops) and tried a few non-alcoholic beers– they’d’ve been much more refreshing if it wasn’t in the low 40s and windy.
I’m excited to try to get an even better result in the Sunshine 10K in just 27 more days.
This content originally appeared on text/plain and was authored by ericlaw
ericlaw | Sciencx (2025-04-07T14:24:14+00:00) A Solid 10K. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/04/07/a-solid-10k/
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