5am seems to come around real quick no matter what time you actually go to sleep, regardless though I wanted to run. I put on some clothes real quick headed over to Starbucks to get my signature "Blackpower", aka Trenta black Iced coffee, and some Naked orange juice. My primary concern before any run, especially a race whether it be 5 miles or 100 miles, is making sure that I get all the shit out of my system. Yes I did say shit, as in all the crap I ate the days prior. There is no worse feeling than being in the middle of a race with tons of people around but not a single tree, bush, fence or port-a-potty and you feel like you are just one bad fart away from shitting yourself. So in order to avoid this I like to wake up with plenty of time before any race to make sure that I can take care of these personal matters at home. So anyways I track down my Garmin, hat, sunglasses and other running paraphernalia and head over to Woodward Park. After I payed my race fee got my bib and t-shirt I wired up my trusty Ipod and hung around the start area with a few minutes to spare. Now I don't normally ever warm up before a race, because the last few were ultras and you have plenty of miles to warm up in those, but since this was just 10 miles I decided to. As the race director called for all runners to the start I lined up behind the guys at the very front but not so far back that I would have to weave through slower runners. As we took off on the road I still had my sweatshirt in my hand that I planned on ditching wherever but the route took us by where I had parked. So as am I running I kind of veer off to the right toss my shirt onto my car then get back over to the course. As I cross back over I realize that I am in the lead and immediately think "oh great I'm that guy" the one who takes off super fast at the start of a race and bonks like 3 miles later. 10 seconds later these two younger runners come up next to me and I kind of drop back and get behind them so they can block some of the wind and see if I can hang with them for a while. At about 2.5 miles I'm still running with these guys at about a 6min/mil pace and I'm feeling good. As we head into a small hill I push the pace a little and they began to fall back. From that point on I just wanted to keep a steady pace and see how long I could hold it for. There was a guy on a bike who we were supposed to follow so we didn't take a wrong turn and I just figured if I ran like I was trying to catch him the whole time that I would be doing alright. Coming back from the turn around I was at the bottom of a hill and could see about a mile back up the trail and I didn't see second place until I almost got all the way back up the hill. Mile 8 comes up and I'm still feeling surprisingly well and holding almost the same pace. In the last couple miles to the finish I was just waiting for someone to come speeding past me but it never happened. I ended up winning the 10 mile race with a time of 1:01:38, it was very anti-climatic at the finish since there were 10 mile walkers who started earlier, coming into the finish at the same time. I was super stoked though since I didn't know I could run that fast for that long and I had never won a race so that was awesome. I was very pleased with my performance and look forward to setting a new personal best next month in the 1/2 marathon.
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| Me and my sweet award |
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| Close Up |
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| My splits for the race |
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| Shinzen 2012 10 mile route |
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| Jill and I volunteering at the Sierra Kids Triathlon |
