Not quite 10k race report

on Saturday, October 7, 2006 at 2:22 PM

Did a 10 km race this morning. Finished with a chip time of 41:23 which would be a super monster PR. But unfortunately the course was significantly short. Apparently the race was setup to coincide with a local town fair and the last part of the original route was to circle around a bunch of side streets and run through the main street. On race day however, they had booths and picnic tables set up on the main street, so the course was changed. I checked with a couple of people with garmins who all reported the course was short. The shortest I was able to find was 9.8 km, but I think the course is still shorter than that. I didn't run with my HR, but did run with a watch. I missed a couple of the markers, split times were:


km
Time Split
3 12:00.2 12:00.2
4 16:30.1 04:29.9
5 20:49.7 04:19.6
6 25:14.6 04:24.9
7 29:36.9 04:22.3
8 34:08.6 04:31.7
9.? 41:23.0 07:14.4

I came in second overall and ended up winning a $30 gift certificate. The only problem is that I think I actually finished first. The race started at the same time for both a 5 and 10km. The 10k runners split off at a water station at about the 2.5 km mark. When I hit the split off point, I heard one of the volunteers yell out that I was the first 10k runner at that point. Now she could have been wrong, but I figure at that point, he would have been about 100m ahead of me since I ended up finishing a little over 1 minute behind him. I didn't see anyone ahead of me and didn't see anyone behind me and no one passed me from that point on. I did see a guy with a bib number running in the opposite direction while out on the extra portion of the 10k course which could of been him so I was thinking he might have missed the turn off point and decided to run the 10k course in the opposite direction. The only problem is that by doing that he missed a loop part that the 5km would have bypassed. I did some checking and the guy that finshed ahead of me ran the Scotiabank marathon 2 weeks ago in a time of 3:47 which does not translate into anything close to a 41 minute 10k. But for the moment, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. I did come away with a $30 gift certificate so I can't complain.

I am a tad miffed at the short course though since I was hoping to use my time to figure out what my marathon pace should be. It's probably for the best though. I was having a hard time with the hills on this course so I'm guessing it's best to live in ignorance and find out what I can (or can't) do in Chicago.

BTW, happy thanksgiving weekend to my fellow Canadians!

3 comments:

yumke said...

Well, you can take the pace you were going (41:23) and do it by 9.8 and see what you come upw ith for a 10K time, then use that to calculate your marathon time. Congrats on finishing second, though (although i agree, would have been nice to finish first)

where was this race?

Sonia said...

It seems like a poorly organized race.... Congrats on your 2nd place! You're rocking those races, will all your PR!!! =)

Arcane said...

Thanks!

Yumke: I was thinking of that but I still think 9.8 is too long. It would have meant that I did the last 1.8 km averaging a pace of 4 min/km which is way too fast. If the last little bit was 1.6 km which is consistent with the pace of the previous km split time of 4:30 then it translates into a 10km time over 43 minutes which means I didn't meet my goal. :( I'm pretty sure that I did run the last split faster than 4:30 pace so I'm going to assume that it was equivalent to a sub 43 minute 10k time. I'm just not sure how much faster. Considering I will probably never win a race in my lifetime, it would have been nice to have my 15 minutes of fame but I guess it wasn't meant to be. The race was in a little town in Newcastle, ON. It's about 30 miles east of TO.

Sonia: Yeah, it was poorly organized. They didn't have enough volunteers pointing/yelling out directions and the roads weren't closed off so we were running along with cars on the road. In addition, on the way back into town, the town had started a dog walk so there was a mass of people and their dogs occupying the side walk. Luckily none of the dogs decided to chase me though it probably would have made me finish faster if they did!

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