Spring Into Action 10k Race Report

Did a 10k on Sunday to practice marathon pace effort again. I did this last year and found it useful to help remember what marathon pace felt like the week prior to the marathon. Last year, I did the Backs in Motion 10k which ideally I would have liked to do again, but this year, that race is on the same weekend as Goodlife/Mississauga so that obviously wouldn't work.  Last year, the Spring Into Action 10k was on the same weekend as Goodlife, but this year they moved it to being a week early. I guess it all works out in the end.

Like last year, I wanted to do the race on not so fresh legs so I planned to do 6 miles beforehand. I planned to do day of race registration since reading online, it seemed it was actually slower to pick up your stuff if you were pre-registered.  The issue with this is that registration only started at 9am and the race was scheduled for 9:50am, so even if I was the first person registered, I probably wouldn't be able to squeeze in the 6 miles before race start.  I ended up splitting the initial 6 miles into two 5k segments. I did 5k upon arriving, registered and then did another 5k.

The route is the for the most part the same out and back route as the Korean Peace Run 10k which I'd run before.  There was a difference in that the turnaround for this race actually corresponded to the 5k mark whereas the Korean Peace Run makes you run a little further out to a point that has a loop in the path which makes the turnaround a little easier and less jarring, it also makes the route about 300m longer.

The course didn't really have km markers. There was a 1km marker which seemed to be accurately placed, but it was only there because there was also a 2km race so the 1km marker signified the turnaround point.  There was also a marker at the 5km mark to signify the turnaround (obviously). They weren't that many marshals, but the route is fairly simple, so they probably didn't need that many.  There was no one at the 5k mark to tell people to turnaround, but the sign was fairly obvious and they made a specific announcement about the turnaround sign before the race so I doubt there were any issue for that.

As for the actual race, I was hoping to get feedback on HR and marathon pace in a race atmosphere.  Looking through the results last year, it seemed that there were a lot of fast people in the race so I thought there would be a lot of people to run with.  Unfortunately, this was not the case as I basically had to run by myself from the 200m mark on.  Looking back, I think the course last year was very short because some 15 year old kid ran a sub-26min 10k last year(world record!) so apparently there weren't that many fast runners.

As usual, I started the race way too fast.  I hit the first km marker in 4:09 (6:41 min/mile pace) and immediately had to back off on the effort to get back on pace.  My GPS then autosplit at the 1 mile mark at 6:59. Unfortunately, my HR spiked at the 6 min mark so I didn't really get a good gauge on HR vs. pace. I think I'm starting to notice a pattern in that it will spike when I ease off the throttle as I had the same thing happen last year too.  I'm hoping if I can avoid starting out too fast, there won't be a need to ease off the throttle which will give me more of a chance of the HR not spiking.  I didn't hit the lap button at the 5km mark, but the GPS route seems to suggest I turned around at around 22:25. The only other split I have is the last km which I did in 4:25 (7:06 pace).

The GPS autosplits are
1 mile: 6:59
2 mile: 7:17
3 mile:  7:17
4 mile:  7:26
5 mile:  7:13
6 mile:  7:15
0.2 mile  1:15 (7:04 pace)

Polar  Stats and Map Route


As i said, I basically had to run the race by myself. There was one guy who pulled up to me at about the 2km mark, but I noticed that one of his shoelaces was undone and he was breathing pretty hard so I wasn't sure how long he would be around. I passed him on a hill and didn't hear from him again. I ended up catching up to another guy at about the 8km mark, but he started to speed up when he heard me coming. I contemplated racing him over the last 2km, but my goal in this was to maintain marathon pace.  The 4 mile split contained the turnaround so that's why that seems slow, but for the most part, I was aiming for 7:20 pace and was able to hit that okay.   Final finish time was 44:41 (7:11 min/mile pace) with what seems to a be an almost even split.

The results say I finished 4th overall, but I know that there's at least one guy (the 8km guy) who aren't in the results.  I think their times were  listed in the 5k race.  My time was initially in the 5k race results also so I had to get the timer to change that.

Fairly good race. Free BBQ after. I'm not sure if there were awards. I doubt it as the entry fee was cheap at $25.   The race raises money for diabetes research and offer 2k, 5k and 10k races with various team/family entries available.  I would definitely do this again if fit into my schedule.