Still Hollow 10k Race Report

I went into this one with two goals: 1)break last year's time of 1:04:55 (very confident of this one) and 2)break one hour (less so). So as I was sitting in my hotel room on Friday night, I compared last year's race splits to last week's run with Herbert. I then took off some time from each mile and kept whittling away until it was under an hour. I wrote each split on my arm along with the 10:26 pace.

I went out fast as the course runs the road (slightly downhill) for about 0.4/mile, hits the trail and continues for about 0.7 before reaching the first hill. By far the fastest mile of the run. My arm read 8:52. I went through mile one in 7:48!

Miles 2-5 are pretty much up and down before the last 3/4 which gradually brings you back down to the start. The goal for these middle miles was to walk the steeps, run the less so, and blast the downhills (gravity playing a major roll here). I went through mile 2 in 10:18, my arm read 10:52. Feeling good, I clicked off mile three (the 2nd toughest of the course) in 10:39, arm 11:21. At this point I was very confident I could break one hour, but my watch presented me with another goal, break 10:00 pace. Starting mile 4 (the toughest), I was at a 9:35 pace.

With my new goal in hand, I continued pushing as much as I could on the hills. Walking only the steep sections and coming out of my walk as soon as I could. Still blasting the downhills I clocked mile 4 in a 11:06, my arm reading 12:00. Of course at this point what my arm read was not important. The pace window on my Garmin was and it read 9:58! But I started mile five with confidence. My arm said 10:30 for this one and I knew I could reduce the pace in that last 3/4 of the race if need be. But on the first hill of mile 5 my pace reached 10:05. I was able on the next tenth or so to get it back down to 10:01 but then another hill. Back up to 10:08! Downhill, 10:02. Uphill, 10:08. Finished mile five in 10:28 with my pace reading 10:05. Knowing the end was near, I pushed hard to the finish, running the couple of uphills and really letting go on the downhills. Went through the finishing chute in 57:33 for a 9:55 pace.

This ended up being one of the most satisfying races I've ever done. I'm glad that 10:00 barrier was there because with the hour goal in hand, I might have let up more towards the end. My time would have put me in 2nd place in my age group last year. As it was, I finished 7 out of 11 this year and 25th out of 130 for the race.