Bridge of Flowers 10K

Well I finished. The weather was beautiful with the temperature in the low 70s at the start line for the race. I edged a bit closer to the front this year in hopes of cutting off the precious seconds lost after the gun goes off, but before crossing the start line. This paid off with only losing 5 or so seconds before I was able to start running. I took the first 2 miles relatively slow at a measured pace, guessing in the 8:00 minute/mi range.

Crittendon Hill, as I mentioned last year is always harder than you remember it the year before. I knew it was about 2/3 of a mile straight up hill, but you tend to forget what running straight up a hill is like, unless you train for it. I didn't. Needless to say I was on a slow jog/fast walk for a good deal of this mile. In comparing my time to last year, I think this is where I lost a majority of the minute vs. last year's time. In the weeks leading up to last year's race, I ran a 10 mile training run along with a couple of 5 mile training runs. This year, the longest I ran was about 4.5 miles.

After getting to the top of Crittendon Hill, the road leveled out, but I was still laboring from a tough hill. The only good part about this section (mile 2.5-3) was that it was heavily shaded and largely downhill. I started to pick things up a bit on the last few miles and according to my nikeplus splits, was hitting in the low 8's for mile splits.

At the finish, I was contemplating finishing hard, but I was borderline ready to puke. Also, right after crossing the iron bridge I noticed the clock read 49:35 or so, giving me enough time to finish the last .1, under 50 mins, so I jogged across the finish.

So I ended up with a time around 49:51 or 49:52 based on my when I think I crossed. Not as good as previous years, but a time I'm satisfied with given my lack of significant training over the past few weeks.