Race Report: 2011 NYRR UAE Healthy Kidney 10k

I’m not certain why this race report took me forever to get up. Oh well, it’s up before my next race…

Another 10k in the park, over the same course as the Scotland Run 10k a couple of weeks ago.  I was feeling a little better, but still wasn’t feeling great. It’s hard for me to feel great about a race when I have to get up so ungodly early for a race. As another larger race I was back in the yellow bibs for this race, no big deal, I wasn’t feeling like I was going to go crazy on this run anyway. No PR for me. Well, at least that was the plan. As usual, epic fail.

2011 NYRR UAE Healthy Kidney 10k Pace and Elevation

Alright, no times there, but you can tell that I held a pretty steady pace despite the hills in Central Park. So, here’s the RunKeeper splits:

Pace for 2011 NYRR UAE Healthy Kidney 10k

Yeah, clearly I was going fast. My previous best 10k was from the Scotland Run a few weeks ago where I had a 7:44 pace. None of my miles were anywhere close to that. I was going fast and feeling pretty good, but I didn’t have a good idea of how good. I was trying to be a good runner and not use headphones, so I wasn’t getting updates on my pace during the race. Furthermore there was a huge slow moving mass at the start and I had no idea how long it took me to cross the starting line. I crossed mile 1 around 9:00. I felt as though I was running a 7:45 pace. Mile 2 was crossed at 16:15, there was no way I was running a 7:45 pace. I felt comfortable. I whipped through the 5k mark with a clock time around 24:20 or so. I had done the 5k somewhere around my best 5k pace. Wow! I crossed the finish line at 47:20 CLOCK TIME. This meant I had certainly smashed my PR for a 10k race, which was 48:02. The question was, by how much? A lot!

2011 NYRR UAE Healthy Kidney 10k Official Results

I’m now in the strange situation where not only my 4M pace is faster than my 5k, but now my 10k is faster too. Wow. It was a good day. Next up, the Brooklyn Half Marathon. Once again, I’m not trying to set a PR. Partially because I need to wake up at 3am to make it to Coney Island to take a subway back to Prospect Park and then make it into my corral by 6:40am. But first, a little picture of 2U, the U2 Tribute Band playing after the race.

2U - The U2 tribute band playing after the race. These guys even tried to look like the band.

Keep Running.

Race Report: 2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope

This will be a pretty quick report. It was the usual 4 mile route traveling up the east side of the park, across the 102nd St transverse, down the west side, and finishing on the 72nd St transverse. I warmed up with a rather long 3 mile run from the starting line up and around the reservoir, and back to the finish line. The weather was near perfect, calm and about 50 degrees to start the run. After running a few races without pre-race announcements I’ve come to appreciate NYRR’s announcements and the singing of “The Star Spangled Banner”, which was beautiful, even if the lyrics were messed up again. As this was the Japan Day Run for Hope (planned before the earthquake and tsunami) there were officials from the Japanese Embassy who addressed the runners. This was probably the saddest part of the race largely because the ambassador felt the need to stress that Japanese food was safe to eat. The scientist in me wanted to scream at this point. Of course it’s safe to eat, there hasn’t been that much radiation. Ughh. Anyway, back to the race.

As usual, we had that strange start stop thing before the starting line. I’d love to model that as a multi-agent system to see what causes this crush, but whatever. It probably took about a 45 seconds to cross the starting line, which seemed long for having a red bib. Most of my miles were pretty even, or at least better than last time. First mile looked like it was about 7:40 thanks to the crush of runners, mile two was a little over seven miles, and mile 3 and 4 were pretty decent at 7:26 and 7:12. Now, last 4 miler in the park I complained about going out too fast in the second mile. But I never bothered to actually look at the elevation. Mile two is almost entirely downhill, so it makes sense that I’m faster. I’ll keep that in mind for future runs.

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope splits from RunKeeper

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope Elevation and Pace

As we came along side the lake toward the 72nd St transverse I was tired, but not exhausted. Toward the finish line I saw the clock ticking toward 30:00. I knew I’d finish under it because I didn’t cross the start for about 45 or so seconds, but something about beating the clock still resonates with me. I don’t think I actually made it. Probably crossed the finish at 30:01 where I was immediately greeted by Mary Wittenberg, who had also just completed the races and told me and all the other runners to keep moving along. The final results, a PR, but not by much. I’m moving down my 4M time incrementally, from 7:20/mi to 7:19/mi and now 7:17/mi. At this race sometime in the next three years I might break into 6:59/mi range. That would be awesome.

2011 NYRR Japan Day Run for Hope Results

Incidentally, I’ve noticed that this is best age-grade percentage that I’ve had in a race yet, which is encouraging. It means that at least if I’m not getting much faster, I’m not getting any slower and doing better than other people in my age bracket. And now, six more weeks of training until Grandma’s Marathon. I’m stoked!

Keep Running!