Race Report - Canine Classic 10K 2009

I went to bed a little later than I should have because I was watching a movie on HBO and it's usually really hard for me to stop watching a movie halfway through. I'd not even bothered turning on the TV but I was verifying the start time of my race and realized that I was off by well over an hour. The 7:25am I saw was when registration opened, not when my race started - it started at 9am. So, I figured I had more time.

Then, this morning, for whatever reason I kept thinking that it started at 9:30 and was planning my warm-up, stretching, and post warm-up BM but then realized on the way to the reservoir, I was wrong in my planning and was very glad at that point that I'd left really early.

The weather was cold, 35-40 degrees with light rain on and off on the drive over but none at the res itself. I got my race packet and taking the rest of the crap in the bag back to the car I affixed the number to my race belt, strapped the belt around my waist and headed out for what was a 3-mile warm-up. Good rule of thumb: the shorter the race, the longer the warm-up needs to be. I'm not sure if 3 miles was necessary, but I was nice and warm (and unfortunately also somewhat wet from sweating) when finished. I got back to the car with about 20 minutes before start time so I did my normal stretches, stripped to my race gear (HEP tri shorts and my sleeveless running top emblazoned with HEP logos and the faint white outline of an iron - apparently the Howie's ironing board needs a little more padding - from when Jen ironed on the logos) donned my Halo headband, and jogged to the starting line with about 5 minutes to spare.

(The race strategy my coach came up with was breaking the race down in to 3 parts: 2 miles, 2 miles and 2.2 miles hopefully negative splitting the parts but shooting for a time goal of 45-47 minutes. The first part was to be Z3/Z4 cusp, the second, mid Z4 but below threshold, and the third, whatever I had left. The goal was also to get faster by only increasing the cadence. As I don't have a cadence sensor on my Garmin FR 305, I have no idea if I did just that, but my times did come down at the end.)

As there was no one at the starting line and indeed no less than 5 volunteers had no idea where the starting line even was I wasn't worried about missing the start, but rather staying warm. Thankfully, we started right on time and since it's the Canine Classic, there were dogs everywhere, including in the run. I started out a little quicker than normal to stay ahead of the slower people and doggies but some of them passed me (never to be seen again until after the race...there were some fast doggies). I settled in to a low Z4 pace and essentially wound up running with this really tall guy and a couple and their two border collies.

Somewhere between miles 2 and 3, I dropped the tall guy and the collies and caught up to the dog/owner in front of me passing him in a corner. I never saw any of them again though I peeked back a few times to see where they were.

As we were running counterclockwise around the res, anyone who knows that section of the road knows it's rather rolling. I'd thought that my mile splits would either stay the same or slow a tad, but because of taking advantage of the hills and upping my cadence I was able to drop the times rather significantly for the last two miles which leads me to believe I was too conservative in the middle part of the run (explained below), a mistake I will not repeat for the Bolder Boulder.

My splits were as follows: 7:10, 7:22, 7:17, 7:19, 7:04, 7:03.

I think I was a little nervous after the first mile and backed it off a tad to make sure I had enough left at the end. As briefly touched on above, I think I might have over reacted a bit and backed off too much. Ideally, for the Bolder Boulder, I'd like those last miles to be sub-7 which, with that nasty hill at the end, might be hard.

Goal for Bolder Boulder: sub-43.