OXY Distance Carnival: 10K Recap
For what feels like the first time in a while I’m surprised that it’s already Wednesday! This week is flying by and I couldn’t be more excited because this weekend we are heading down to San Diego for a little mini-racecation!! A few weeks ago I was invited to run the Hot Chocolate 15K in San Diego and represent one of the sponsors, Sweet Valley Organics. A Hot Chocolate run has been on my race bucket list for a long time so I quickly accepted (after checking with my coach that it fit with my training). We’ll be heading down on Saturday, I’m running the 15K on Sunday morning, and then we’re planning to hit up a few of our favorite restaurants and the zoo before we head back home. It’s going to be a blast!
Before I set my sights on my next race I wanted to sit down and recap my 10K from this past weekend. If you didn’t see on Instagram, I ran my first 10K on the track late, late on Saturday night and came away with a big 10K PR of 35:16 (48 second PR from my road time)!! It was really dark, late and rainy so there are no good pictures… so I apologize in advance for the long, picture-less recap, haha.
Track racing is so different from road racing so let’s rewind to the beginning of the day. I slept in as much as I could and got in an easy 3 mile shake out run. For breakfast I had corn pancakes, scrambled eggs and strawberries.
For the rest of the morning we relaxed all together and watched a movie. Then once Liv went down for her nap I headed off to school to meet the bus because the team I coach was also racing at the meet so I had to go over much earlier than my race. I meet the athletes and the bus at 2pm and we started driving to the meet. On the bus I ate a turkey sandwich and bread from Panera. We got to the track around 3:30 and I spent most of the afternoon and early evening cheering on our athletes. I stayed off my feet most of the time and tried to stay as warm and dry as I could despite the constant rain. I knew that if I didn’t eat anything between 2ish (when I had lunch) and my race I would be hungry during my run so around 6 I had another piece of baguette from Panera, a banana with PB and an apple sauce pouch.
My race was scheduled to go off at 10:05PM and surprisingly the meet was right on schedule. So I finalllllly started my warm-up around 9:15 – I was getting pretty anxious/excited to warm-up but it was still too early so I occupied myself by cheering on our guys in the 5K. There were 7 heats (YES! 7 heats of men’s 5ks!) so I had to warm-up after the 4th heat and that was the last heat we had people running in… so it worked out perfectly and kept my mind off wanting to warm-up when it was still too early!
I did my regular warm-up routine – 2 mile jog, drills + strides, and headed to the line. This race was PACKED… 10Ks take a long time so a lot of meets combined the men’s and women’s races. This particular meet allowed 30 men and 30 women and 58 people actually ended up starting the race. So to say it was crowded was an understatement. I was really hoping going into the race that there would be guys in my time range to run with but unfortunately that was not the case.
The gun went off and most of the guys took off! I was running off the back of a back of guys with one other gal right behind me. I tried to stick to the plan (run 84s) but it was hard to find my groove at the beginning and the first few laps were a little quick, I may have even dropped an 80 in there somewhere… oops! I finally found my 84s and for a long time just focused on clicking those off. Unfortunately, the gal I was running with was crowding me the entire race… no fewer than 10 times during the race she kicked/stepped on my heels. The biggest incident was right as we came through lap 6 and she got all tangled up in my legs and I nearly fell flat on my face… one of my coaching friends who was still there for his team told me it was so bad he was worried in the moment that I was going to injure my ACL. Luckily, I stayed on my feet and ran the next 14 laps mad and when I run mad I run really well!
I felt great all the way through lap 20 then with 5 laps to go my stomach started cramping, this had absolutely nothing to do with what I had eaten that day and was 100% related to starting my period earlier in the afternoon. I was like the last mile of the LA Rock n Roll Half Marathon all over again… my legs and body felt AMAZING but if I pushed the pace I felt like I was going to throw up. With 4 laps to go the gal I had been running with passed me and I tried to go with her but my stomach just couldn’t handle it. If I was running 87s my stomach felt fine, if I pushed it faster than that the pain set in. For that last mile I just focused on maintaining 87s and not letting my pace slip even more. I managed to do just last and finished the race with a new PR.
I’ve ultimately pleased with my time but there are some things that could have gone better so I definitely feel like I have some unfinished business in the 10K this season. I’m hoping to get in one more on the track this season so I can break that 35 minute barrier!