CCC 10k for the 4th time

Ah, the Capital City Classic 10k. I have a love/hate for this race.  Love the route, the distance, that it's flat, it's scenic, the weather is usually gorgeous. Hate that there's no chip timing and with a race that's grown to have nearly 800 participants and is a state RRCA Grand Prix race then it damn well should have.  In the past 4 years of running it I don't think my garmin, what I've seen on the clock, and the official results have ever matched.  Yes I'm a middle of the pack runner, not anywhere near a front runner but as one of the girls I ran with yesterday said, "seconds count".

So that grumble aside, I am happy with how I ran the race.  Brenda and I were kind of co-pacing one of her friends, a girl she coached last year in the WCR (women can run) clinic.  Well, it was more of a case that we tried to keep up with her on most of it, lol.  Normally I tend to slow down between miles 3 and 4 after jack-rabbiting the first couple in order to re-group and save up some strength to pick up speed at mile 5.  Not this time, we were pushing hard for us and with being sort of accountable to someone else I was able to keep it up much better than I expected, especially considering that I'd ran a tough 10 miler with Patti the previous morning.  Yes, I kind of over-scheduled myself but it was Patti's last day in the state before flying to stay with her mother for a bit and no way was I saying no when she asked me to run her long run with her.

But I digress, back to the race.  While we were pushing hard, we were also passing other runners in a fairly consistent manner.  There were a few that we kind of leap-frogged back and forth with but generally once we passed it was done (all except for the one young lady who found a HUGE sprint approximately .1 of a mile from the finish line).  I did make a mistake by stopping and grabbing a drink at the 2nd water stop, 2 sips and my stomach started cramping almost immediately after. I simply can't do plain water on a race. Lesson learned.

Despite the cramps I pushed on to try and keep up and they kinda, sorta eased.  At least after a few iffy moments I knew I wasn't gonna have to stop.  That's where my HTFU motto comes in handy, forget the smiling though, I was hurting too darn much, lol.  Around half a mile out Brenda yells out something like "come on ladies, let's push it and get this hurting over with!"  I'm paraphrasing slightly because I honestly was HURTING too much to remember exactly how she put it.  We did pick it up though! I just never thought we were gonna reach that freaking finish line though, ugggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Click to enlarge

So race recap, according to my garmin--which I started as soon as we started moving well before the actual start line--I ran 51:16, the exact same time that shows on last year's results.  The clock at the finish line showed 51:17 and my official results say 51:20.  The three of us were literally on each other's heels, Brenda was 1 second behind me, and Britney was right behind her but the results say 2 and 9 seconds behind me respectively while our garmins show us as one second each behind the other.   

One thing I'm very proud of on yesterday's race, we ran negative splits.  The 8:13 average pace on mile 5 is where my stomach started cramping but still faster than the first three miles (huge smile!).  I couldn't have pushed any harder on this one.  No age group awards for me this year, way too many speedy females in my age group showed up, I was 49/362 females and 7/56 in the 40-44 age group.  Huge shout-out to so many people for getting personal records yesterday!!!!!!!!!! Lots of happy runners that I'm incredibly proud of.

Reward for running 10 miles on Friday, breakfast courtesy of Patti and Brice at Dogtown Coffee and Cookery, yum!