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.
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.
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.
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.