I’ve been away from running for a little bit. Specifically, I was in China for the last few weeks and while I ran there a few times I didn’t do any races and I certainly didn’t do anything that resembled training. The few times that I did run my lungs felt like Trogdor was attacking and burninating them. I was told that it wasn’t pollution, but somehow I have my doubts.
The Scotland Run 10k was my first real chance to get out and give the legs some serious exercise since I returned. I laid down about 20 easy miles over the past week, but this was the first time I felt like I was going to run hard. My first impression of the race: it’s HUGE. Nearly 8500 completed the loop (and a little more) in Central Park on Sunday morning. A fair share of them were in kilts. A few went the full William Wallace and did Braveheartesque face paint. Sadly, I saw no members of the clan MacLeod running around with swords looking to chop heads off. Also, I realized that I was doing my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon a serious disservice by eschewing wearing anything with the Carnegie Tartan. It was completely unintentional, as in, when I woke up at 6am on race day I forgot.
Now, with respect to racing stuff. I knew I had a good chance to set a PR running this race, mainly because the 10k distance was an outlier in my PRs. I hadn’t run a 10k since September 2008. That race was under similar conditions, as I had just returned from vacation where I spent 10 days intentionally not running and just relaxing in the Greek Isles. Unlike a loop around Central Park, the elevation change in the Great Race is in favor of the runners. The race is almost entirely downhill. At the same time, I was much slower back in 2008, and if I couldn’t beat an 8:11/mi pace for this race something would be seriously wrong with me.
I was a little sad to see that once again I was demoted to yellow bibs. I’m hoping this is a result of many people running NYRR events and not because I was getting slower. The corrals, on the far end of Central Park were absolutely packed. Aside from the corrals at the start of the 2009 Twin Cities Marathon I don’t think that I’ve ever felt so packed in. The starting horn went off and we stood still. Some 1:40 seconds later I crossed the starting line. I think I started RunKeeper a little bit early, but it couldn’t have been that much off.
Pace and Elevation for the 2011 Scotland Run 10k
The crowd was pretty heavy going into the first mile, but I was very surprised when I saw that I still did it under eight minutes. Normally with that level of traffic it would take much longer. I chalk that up to the excellent work by NYRR volunteers in enforcing the corral system. Thank you volunteers. Miles 2 and 3 seemed to whiz by. I knew the race was going to be too busy to have RunKeeper chime in my ear, so I was estimating my miles based on the clocks, and I thought they were about 7:30/mi. A nice pace. Of course, then came the hill. Ughh. I shouldn’t complain too much, I’d rather run clockwise as then the hills over by the Met aren’t nearly as bad. But man, I got to mile 4 and saw that it took me nearly eight minutes to finish the last mile. The final 2.2 miles were an exercise in trying to maintain what I thought was my previous pace. Although I was able to pick it up for mile 5, I slacked on mile 6 before crossing the finish line with the overall clock was still under 50:00. I knew I PR’d, the only question was by how much.
2011 Scotland Run 10k Splits from RunKeeper
Post race there was a large festival with Scottish music, dancers, and food. It was actually quite a bit of fun. I wrote a couple of postcards from Scotland, used a bike blender, and tried out various Scottish snacks. Sadly, there was no haggis to be found. Also, I didn’t win either the TV or the trip to Scotland. Bummer. However, as I walked back to Grand Central to get the train out of the city I was able to check my results. 48:02, or 2:49 off my previous best time for a 10k. I could be happy with that. I’m also hungry because I know that I’ve got room for more improvement.
2011 Scotland Run 10k Official Results
I’m looking forward to the running season heating up. I’ve got a nice lineup of future races in both New York and Minneapolis, culminating with Grandmas Marathon in mid-June in Duluth, MN. I figure I should get serious about training for that, which is why I was on the trails at 6:30am today. I’m stoked right now.
Keep Running.
