P.A.M's Run for Pancreatic Cancer Research 10k

Before the race report a a few alternative titles…What goes out fast comes back slow…What goes down must come up…What the eff are you doing…and my favorite The faster you run the sooner you can rinse the sick out of your mouth….are you getting the picture! And so on with the show.

After last weekend’s race I really felt that there was more in the tank, being sick and tired literally not metaphorically, took its toll and I wanted another bite at the cherry. So when my wife suggested we all sign up for this local race I jumped at the chance, she ran the 5k and our kids ran the 1k, this was actually our 2 y/os first race and our 5 y/os third, that was a total blast!

I purposefully had an easy week and some realitivly early nights so I was feeling pretty good when I woke up this morning. We arrived a bit too early, after last weekend I wanted to make sure we got there in good time and after standing in line to collect our numbers and registering the boys we wandered off to the start. I left my wife and went off to warm up with an easy mile, some strideres and the like, from there I made my way towards the front of the runners. There were some serious looking club runners and a few very talented looking people hanging about, what the hell I thought and I plonked myself down right behind them and waited for the count down. Which came and we were off.

Now I had driven the course earlier in the week and I knew that it was basically 3.1 miles down and then 3.1 miles up! Pretty simple really, the plan was to go conservatively hard and try to get to the half way point in 20 minutes and that would leave me as little of 24 minutes as I needed to use for the return half, you can see from Garmin Training Centre that I was a little slow with M1 6:12 M2 6:29 and Mile 3 7:08 giving me total for 3 miles of 20:21 and a guestimate 5k of around 21:00. During the first half I had been pacing off a group who pulled away and as expected for the second half I started going backwards!

Just after the turnaround a girl caught up with me and we ran lock step for a mile and then she pulled ahead, around mile 4.5 the last person who would pass me did and I was on my own for the last 1.7 miles. I knew I had to work on calming my heart rate in preparation for the climbing and I tried to just be steady and find the “zone”. I reached the 5k race turnaround and it was like Times Square with walkers, strollers, dogs on leashes, people have a good old chit chat and a water stop, to avoid the melee I skipped up onto the sidewalk and weaved around a bit nearly tripping over someone’s dog! After that I pulled back onto the coned off road section and it was just head down heart rate up, I really really wanted to go faster but there was nothing left and I knew if I did I would blow up. My Garmin was screaming at me to ‘Speed Up’! I had set the pace alert at 6:40-6:50 and I was bumbling along in the mid 7:00s! I turned the last corner and I knew there was a little over a half a mile left, I saw the 6 mile sign then the 3 mile sign which meant there was 0.1 of a mile left I could see the clock counting towards 44:00 and I just pulled out all I had to try and beat it! I crossed the line and staggered through the chute I was tagged and found the nearest piece of terra forma and fell on it! I was done! Seriously all tapped out and feeling shaky from the effort I maxed out my HR at 185!

Here’s a screenshot from SportTracks showing the elevation change and my pace decrease!

I hooked up with my wife and my in-laws who are visiting and hung about for a while waiting for the kids 1k race which served as a good cool down! From there we went back to the ‘expo’, for a race in its second year they had really put on a great show, with a lot of local vendors showing support, one of LA’s radio stations, free Mexican food, bagels, Fusion drinks, Powerbars, Coffee and a few other things that we took advantage off!

Finally they started to post the 10k times, my time 44:01, you know what my time was from last weekend 44:02! Yep one second, One Second, ONE FREEKIN’ SECOND! WTF! I checked tonight and it’s confirmed, I was 13^th out of 236 an improvement over last weekend and I won my Age Group! In fact in the top 20 there were only two other runners and me over 40! But get this two brothers tied for first in 36:14, their ages 16 and 12 TWELVE!!!

So with hindsight it was the race that it was going to be, the downhill was fast and the up not so, and not so more than I thought! I have to say that while a PR is nice and I was stoked about the AG win I am really starting to get p!$$ed off with this distance…maybe that’s what I need to fuel the fire for the next time!