Race #11 : USAF 10K

So finally for a race recap!

My race weekend began and ended with a 7.5 hour drive. On the way to Ohio I decided to break the drive time up and stayed in a hotel outside of Indianapolis. I did go for a nice run in Greenwood, IN.

Goofy self portrait!

 After a night in Indy, I started the drive to Ohio and once I arrived I went straight to the expo. The race expo was nice but not what I'm used to given my experience with expos is limited mostly to Rock N Roll events but I did end up getting lots of swag in my goodie bag and picking up a few extra things.

 After the race I had an amazing dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse with way to much food!

After my late lunch/early dinner, I headed back to my hotel in Ohio, thinking I would go to the 5K and cheer the runners on/listen to the band, but instead I ended up taking a nap that lasted much longer than I was planning on it.

Race morning came super early and as usual I got there super early, so I had plenty of time to wander/try not to freeze.

The Start Line!

Would you like a medal or 2000?

Soon you will be MINE!

So after an hour and half or so of wandering we finally started wandering to line up. Marathoners lined up according to flags with projected times, the 10kers (is that a word?) seemed to fill in where ever, I jumped in somewhere in the middle. I ended up behind a group of guys from U of Dayton ROTC who were running the 10K with 35 pound packs and told me they were planning on running 11 minute miles. I foolishly decided to run with them for at least the first mile. I was hoping for around a 12 minute mile so I figured why not try to keep up for a bit.

Two nice ROTC guys that agreed to take a picture with me!

Finally the start!

Mile 1: The first mile wasn't that bad although trying to keep up with the ROTC was challenging, when I finally looked at my watch I realized why, they where running a 10 min mile! I backed off a bit but managed to finish my first mile with a 11:04 pace.

Mile 2: My right calf started to cramp up and the mile was all uphill so I decided to take it slow and managed to finish up the mile in 14:22 with a 161 ft elevation gain!

Mile 3: After the mile of uphill, we started to go downhill and my calf was easing up so I sped up a bit and managed to finish the mile in 11:39.

Miles 4-6: Mostly flat, not any spectators and everyone was starting to spread out. It was mostly a mental game for me. I hadn't been running much lately so it was harder than I would have liked but I made it through. Mile 6 brought with it some disappointment because for some reason I had it in my head I had to break 1:12:04 for a PR but all I could think of was finishing and get my medal and finishing race #11 for the year.

Finish Line: YAY! It was really awesome, running under a plane wing, the spectators, the first wheeled marathoner finishing right before me, the finish line and the medal, put on me by a Air Force Officer in his uniform!

I forgot to pause my garmin until I stopped long enough for this picture!

Post race: Lots of yummy food, a great band and possibly my favorite thing of any race, they had a results table, you just walked up and they would pull up your results based on your bib and print out your results for you right there! It wasn't until I sat down and started snacking, and check my race results on my blog, that I realized I had a new PR!!! It made it all so my more awesome!

Overall, I had a great time and would definitely do this race again and again (after all the bling changes every year)! I did hear that some problems happened along the half marathon course, with some wrong turns due to poor route marking. That's the only thing I heard that was negative.