2006 Us Too Father’s Days 10K

[Us Too 10K bib]Well, that could have gone better.

I didn’t suck as badly as I did in the 2005 Great Race, but I’m not thrilled with my performance in the Us Too Father’s Day 10K. I placed 15th out of 22 men in the 20-29 age group and 179 out of 277 finishers with a time of 58:29. That’s a pathetic 9:25 pace. I’d hoped to finish under 45:00 if possible and definitely under 50:00. I think the biggest think that hurt me was the heat. It was a humid 80+° morning and there weren’t many water stations.

The insufficient water was my only major beef with an otherwise well-organized race. There was a station at about mile 1 and then another around mile 4. There might have been a third that i’m forgetting, but the point is that water stations were few and far between. The Great Race last year was a scorcher, but there was plenty of water along the route. Having so little water on such a hot day strikes me as pretty irresponsible. To make matters worse, by the time 10K racers were finished, 5K racers and their friends/families had taken all the bottled water. All that was left a guy pouring from a gallon jug into the same tiny cups used at the water stations. *grumble*

I’m still on the lookout for July and August races. If you know of any good ones, please let me know.

P.S. "No strollers" means "NO FREAKIN’ STROLLERS, @$$#*%&!!!"

A Great Run :)

"…I decided to go for a little run…For no particular reason I just kept on going." – Forrest Gump

This weekend, I’m in Arlington, Virginia with my wife visting some of her friends from college. This morning, I went for a run on the Custis Trail. I thought I’d run at least 5K and perhaps go 10K if I felt good. As it turned out, not only did I feel good, I felt fantastic. I just kept on running until I hit the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, and I ran for a while on that. I turned around after running for 45 minutes. I felt like I was running about an 8:30 pace, so I probably went between 10 and 11 miles.

That’s the farthest I’ve ever run in a single shot. Woohoo!

Even better, I felt like I could have run a lot farther. For the first time, I actually feel like I could run a half marathon or longer. Today is a good day. 🙂

Addendum I forgot to mention that I ran without my Walkman. I haven’t run with it since.