A 10K
 
Today I ran the Marin Memorial Day 10K and even though I didn’t have the super fancy running gear and I wasn’t an ex-Olympian I still did ok -- as in I got 32nd.
 
I really wanted to run sub-40 minutes and I was ready. Even without a watch, I ran exactly 6:25s for the first three miles. I just kept focusing on passing the people who had had dreams of running 5 minute miles. I was running with this other woman and we just kept chugging along, though we slowed down and ran a 6:35 4th mile. GOD.
 
I didn’t really think much. Just kept staring at the ground and trying to run “faster” and as long as I tried to run faster I stayed about the same speed. And every now and then I would take a big deep breath because I was breathing so hard.
 
Around 4.5 miles, a little before the 5 mile, we caught this other girl and the woman I was with and that girl started picking it up. Or, maybe, they stayed the same speed and I fell off. I knew, knew, that I had to stay with them to be right at 40 minutes, but they just slowly slipped away. I felt like I was running hard and it really started to hurt and that was when I started to think too much. I ran a 6:40 that mile.
 
I tried, I tried to pick it back up the last mile. I really focused on turning my legs over and I thought I could not physically run any faster, um, but it’s a little frustrating because, mathematically, you know that in order to make up the 20 seconds you lost you’d have to run a 6 minute mile. Which was NOT going to happen.
 
Still, I hit the 6 mile and saw the clock say 38:58 and I was like “I can kick! I’ll just kick really hard!” Um, like a 60 second 400m?? I started sprinting super hard. Then I threw up a little in my mouth. Everything was, literally, about to come up (not just like ‘oh I feel kind of sick’), but like hurling all over. It’s ok, it’s ok, just throw up after you finish. Then, no, no I wasn’t going to make it to the finish. Can I throw up and keep running? No, no, probably not. If I stop and throw up, will that take longer? Probably.
 
If I was winning, it might be ok to throw up all over the nice infield, but 30 women had already finished in front of me. I wasn’t going to break 40 at this point and I really didn’t want to throw up all over myself or everything. I pulled back and slowed down, just get through the finish line.
 
But, overall, I was pretty happy with the 3 minute improvement over last year at a race where the Olympian didn’t break the course record.
Monday, May 25, 2009