Striders Saturday Classic 10 Miler

10 Miles - 1:12:36

What a beautiful day for a run. It was about 57 this morning, cloudy, and very little wind. My first 10 Mile race today, the Striders Saturday Classic. The course was an out and back, it was said the first 2.5 Miles were fairly flat, and the second 2.5 were a bit hilly. This last statement was a little under emphasised. These were large hills, multiple one, steep ones, long one. So with the out and back, it made the middle 5 Miles and up and down affair. I more that certainly underestimated these hills. The way out was not too bad, and I felt really good, that would be because even though there was a lot of up and down, we were for the most part running down, so on the way back, man.

With that said, my goal was to run 7:20 miles, this is based of an estimation of where I should be on this race for me to run under 2 hours in the 25K in may. My mile times were right around 7:16, just 4 seconds slower than my 10K times last week....I was pretty pumped. Now my official time was a 1:12:44 or something, but we didn't use RFID chips, and I started in the back of the herd. So I used the time on my watch, which was pretty accurate because they had a painted while line on the road for the start and finish, so it was easy to get it right.

Lets see.....oh yeah, lets talk pain....hardest run I have ever done. I actually got dizzy around mile 8 or 9, I am not sure. Am my legs went numb. When I finished, I had a hard time seeing straight. Pretty tough run for me, but worth it.

Unfortunately no one ran with me on this race, I did see my friend Pam Nauta again, her and her boyfriend Hank are at all the races, and they usually both win their divisions, with Hank always finishing the the top 10 overall. Good runners. And of course my good friends Markiel and Analou Schoonmaker made it to see me finish... Real good kids, Mark would have ran but his knee was hurting. Made it more enjoyable having them there.

So next is the Fifth Third 25K....well.....after a lot more training.