My First 10K! Senior Olympics...Watch Out!

Well, my blogging friends.  I can't help but apologize for my glaring absence this week from both posting regularly and being a good follower/commenter as well.  My Google Reader is jam packed and I do hope to get through each and every one of my postings and comment where I can.  Time here has been very busy, but I head back to Utah tomorrow (Sunday) and my lovely wife who I've missed very much.

So...today, at 8am this morning, I embarked on my first organized 10K run.  It was the Heart to Heart 10k.  I was actually pretty worried about this one as I hadn't run since last Sunday's official first 5K race and I just wasn't "feeling it.".  But as to not disappoint, I woke up and got my butt up and going.  I still, for every run, compose blogs in my head.  Kind of like speech writers for the politicians, I draft two depending on the outcome, though I keep trying to keep the good outcome in my head the whole time.

My only fuel for the morning was a Peanut Butter Cookie Larabar.  Yesterday was a dietary nightmare so I had plenty of stored fuel as well.

It was a pretty nice day...sunny...around 85 degrees, but humid as always for the St. Louis area...it had rained overnight.

As this was a charitable run, it had a larger number of participants of all shapes, sizes, and abilities so I felt more comfortable among the crowd.  What I didn't know is that they actually offered a 5K run as well so the 10K was simply two loops of the same route.  I wasn't exactly cool with that at first as I wasn't sure if I'd like covering the same ground over again, but it actually turned out nice since I knew what I had left to go on the second loop and could keep me motivated I guess.  Actually, I'm just glad that I didn't let my mind talk me into cutting the run short at the 5K mark.

This was a bit of a hilly route so it was much like my training routes in Utah, but with high humidity.  They had a few water stations, but I ran with my Camelbak and saved the environment from the cups and the neighbors from worrying whether the tossed cups would be collected by the volunteers.  It would have been nice if someone had sponsored some Gatorade or something because I still need to work on my in-race fuel.

My pace was slower than the 5K overall, but I felt I did pretty darned good even though I had some heel pain during the week and I was having some shin warning pains, but they went away reasonably quickly.

Keeping true to promises I make to myself, I ran the whole race.  There were some that walked the hills, but ran the flats and the descents.  While there is absolutely no shame in walking any portion of a race, it is simply my own commitment to run what I feel is supposed to be a run.

My dad went with me this morning and took some of the pics, though like the 5k, I ran with a camera in my hand the entire race.  It was nice to have him there.

Probably one of the toughest part of the races occurred within about 2 miles of the end and I had an itch developing deep within my backside that would have required some rather not-so-delicate digging around to address.  I toughed it out, though.

I guess the only truly lame thing about the event was getting a 5K ribbon for finishing because they ran out of the 10K ones...as if they didn't know how many were registered or something.  My guess is that a volunteer handed out the wrong ribbons to the 5K finishers.  Oh well...I don't need no stinking ribbon!

So...another race distance milestone has been achieved.  I guess that leaves the half-marathon as the next logical step in the evolution, but we'll just keep taking things a day at a time and always working to get better and better.

And now for pics and vids!

The "Before" Picture...notice the bright eyes and confident smile?...it didn't last.

It was a pretty decent sized turnout for a suburban race that didn't have its own website or anything.  The local municipal parks system was the beneficiary.

Here I am bypassing the 5K finish line to start the next loop for the 10K.  That was actually a very nice feeling to know that I was joining the "smaller" group in reaching their goals.

Here I am coming into the finish after the second loop...Not so smiley as when I started, but I was very glad to have run the whole race.

The actual crossing of the line...I think they listed my chip time as 1:13:59 for an 11:56 pace...not too shabby really.

I was soaked through and through.

And we are off and running! (sort of)

And we are finished!

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