Ringing in Hope 10k

So, dear readers (both of you), maybe you are interested in how the New Year's 10k went. Maybe you are wondering if I stuck to my plan and met my goal of running it in under 50 minutes.

Well! I'm happy to report that I had an awesome race!

 While my main goal was to come in at under 50 minutes (a 7:58 min/mile pace) I had a separate goal of maintaining a 7:50 minute mile. A friend from my running club had a similar goal, so we ran the whole thing together and it really helped to pace each other and stay accountable throughout the entire race.

I intended on starting off at 7:55ish, then after the halfway mark evaluate how I'm feeling to see if I could push it more in the second half. Of course, I started much faster than I wanted. But I felt really good the whole race. I definitely pushed myself harder than I ever have in a race this distance, but felt strong. I ended up finishing in 48:21, which is a 7:44 pace! If you're interested, my Garmin data is here on Strava and my splits are below.

Mile 1     7:42

Mile 2     7:42

Mile 3     7:54

Mile 4     7:54

Mile 5     7:28

Mile 6     7:51

0.2           7:13

(I'm surprised mile 6 was comparatively so slow. There was a slight hill, but I still thought it was faster than that. Hm.)

Love the twiner Garmin stop button pose.

 

After finishing, I hung around the finish line to cheer on Beau and my cousin, Shawney. This was Husband's first 10k and he rocked it! He has been running the weekly track workouts with me and was pleased with a time of 56 minutes.

I was curious to stay for the awards and see how the others in my running club did. I checked out the official times, and you can imagine my surprise when I saw that I was the 15th overall woman and first in my age group! I have never been on the podium before, so I was totally shocked to have won my age group. It was so exciting to have my name called, and I got a gift certificate to a local running store.

Also, there is a "team" division in this race, and I ran with the AARC team (my running group). I guess they take the top 4 results of each team for a cumulative time. There are several speedy guys in the club, and lucky for me, the speedy women were not running this race. So, again, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was also called up with my team to receive the first place team medal.

So that was fun. It makes me want to do more short and speedy races!

As far as the race itself, the Ringing in Hope races are pretty well organized and user friendly. They had lots of kid activities like pony rides, a moon bounce, balloon animals, etc. There was barbeque, pizza, and fruit for post races snacks, and everything seemed to be run pretty well. My only complaints are that the course is pretty boring (but what else are they supposed to do... all they have around there is neighborhood streets anyway) and that the race t shirt is a white cotton tee.

What a fun race! Now that I'm a fan of short races, I can't wait to do the next one!