I ran the Hale Center Theater, Hale Freezes over 10k, again for the 3rd time. Ran it last January, in October and today. I like this race. It has gotten much larger very quickly.
After my 2 20 milers last weekend, I decided to not run very many miles this week to try to recover for the race today. I have been fighting my right leg not working on and off all week, and got it working enough for the race today.
The moved the start of the race to a side street, I think to make room for all the people at the start, this also shortened the course by about .1 from the previous 2 times I have run it. Map my run still shows this course to be 6.2 miles though, so I guess running the tangents, or not running them, not sure which, makes it come up .2 short on the gps.
I lined up at the front for the start and headed out strong. There was a decent sized group of people who started off quick. One guy in particular who jumped about 30 feet in front of everyone else for the first half mile or so then he started pulling away from there. One interesting thing about this course is that you aren't sure until the end of mile 2 who you are racing against since the 5k and 10k share the course to that point. I was in six place coming into the split and only 2 people peeled off to the left to head down to geneva. I just held on and was watching my heart rate to make sure I wasn't loafing the rest of the race. The HRM freaked out the first 2 miles, as usual, it had me hit a 214 heart rate.
So I knew I was in third place at that point. My parents were leap frogging me on the course and at one point let me know that the 4th place runner was pretty far back, so at least I didn't have someone breathing down my neck the whole time. 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th, we were all spaced out at least 500 yards from each other, if not more. I knew I was a bit faster than my ran in October and was very surprised when I stopped my watch and it had a 35 on it. I went from a 40 minute 10k to get 2nd last january, to a 35:52 this january to get 3rd. The competition has been getting tougher, but I have been fortunate and have yet to not set a PR on a comparable course since I started running 2 years ago. I know this streak will eventually end, and it will be a sad day when it does, but I am very curious to know how much faster I can push this body before I stop setting pr's.
My splits were, 5:38, 5:34, 5:58, 6:20, 6:29, 6:08
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