Capital City Classic 10K

Saturday was my second time to run the CCC 10K and I was excited to try to beat my previous 10K PR. This is a really nice course mostly flat but can be pretty windy in spots, we are right next to the Arkansas River after all.

It seems like my running has been all over the place lately, one day it feels good the next it doesnt. A big part of that is because of all the speedwork and longs runs we've been doing. I guess sometimes I forget that speedwork is supposed to be hard!! and since the WCR clinic i've been doing 3 nights a week of speedwork. Dennis helped put things into perspective for me on Tuesday night and i've been feeling better about how i've been feeling.
I will admit though on Thursday night when we were doing our warm up run it felt really hard and I thought to myself how am I going to run fast for 6 miles on Saturday?????????

Kelly had to take the weekend off because of knee issues, actually she is probably going to be off for a couple of weeks but we are still waiting for the final diagonsis.

Bailey and Robert rode with us to Little Rock and we got there plenty early!! We ran to pick up our bib's and t-shirts and we ran into Josh and Kellie, poor Kellie her foot has been bothering her for a couple of weeks. She had been planning on running the 10K but during the warm up she decided it just wasnt' worth it she needs to rest and let her foot heal.
We also ran into Gary and Curtis, Heather S and several others. We did kind of an informal warm up by basically running back and forth between the car's and the start line. I did a couple of strides but nothing major, actually I wish I had done a better warm up but everything turned out ok anyway.

Michele and James finally arrived and we all lined up, I had Kelsey's I-pod on and ready to go... that thing was a life saver!!!
My plan was to start off slow and then build up speed, Michele and I had talked about this quite a bit the day before and then we finally said we might as well shut up, we know we will start too fast so may as well get used to it!

We moved back a little bit from the front before the race started and so we were a few seconds behind everyone else from the beginning.
My goal for this race was 59:59 last year my time was 1:04:11 and back in November I had set my 10K PR with a 1:01:05.
I knew I needed to keep a 9:40 avg pace to meet my goal. I haven't seen Cheryl since I got my new Garmin so I don't have all the screens set up so I never knew what my avg pace was during the race, I did know that I never saw anything slower than a 9:30 whenever I would glance at it which wasn't very often.

The weather was perfect and I had on my zebra skirt sports skirt and a black short sleeve tech shirt. I was comfortable the whole time I never got too hot or too cold.
Michele and I stayed together the first 4.5 miles, we both had on i-pod's but we only put one ear bud in so we were still able to have a little bit of conversation. Michele is really very fast and has a lot of endurance but she doesn't love racing and really doesn't care about speed so she was happy to stay with me. I had told her several times to go on but she waited until about 4.5 miles. I had started to fatigue a little bit but was still feeling pretty strong but even on my best day and Michele's worst day she is still faster!! LOL At the start they had warned us about loose dogs around the 4 mile marker, I think one of the reasons Michele stayed with me until 4.5 was so she could protect me from the dogs!! LOL It never fails that if a dog is out he is going to come straight for me, as soon as we saw the dogs Michele moved closer to the road and had her arm, I guess ready to catch me if I fell?? Luckily these dogs never did really bother us.
We had run a little bit with James Michele's husband and the whole time I could see Arland just ahead of us, I was trying to reel him in but he was really having a great race. I will admit it is frustrating sometimes to see him take walk breaks and yet he still finished ahead of me! LOL We did catch up with him and ran with him for a little bit but his long legs are just too much for me.
I actually was more than fine to be running by myself, I had Kelsey's I-pod and my thoughts and I felt good. It also felt good to pass a lot of people toward the end who had passed me in the beginning. The last .25 or so of the race is kind of hard mentally, you can hear people and you can see the finish line but it seems to take forever to get there. As I was approaching several Cruisers who had finished before me were walking back and they all offered encouragment that was really nice but the best was when I saw Bailey and she starting running with me and helped give me energy for that final push. I could see the finish line and it was 57:xxxx I was so excited I kept thinking on my goodness i'm going to finish under 59:00... I didnt' have a lot left but I did try to sprint it in at the end and my final time was 58:17. I was so excited!!! It such a great feeling to have a goal and to actually exceed it!
Everyone had done really well at this race, Michele ended up with 57:11 and Heather S finished in 56:??, Arland 58:01 etc.
Oh and Josh our superstar he finished in 36:43 the really nice thing is after the race when we were talking he was as excited for me over my time as he was for himself... ok maybe not as excited but he really is such a nice guy and so encouraging to everyone and that is such a refreshing change from some fast runners who look down on slower runners.
They had beer and pizza for post race refreshments and I couldn't stomach a beer but I did have a slice of pizza. This is really a great race they do a great job putting it together!!
When it was time for the Awards ceremony we all snuggled together and had a great time cheering as quite a few Cruisers won awards... including yours truly who won 2nd in the 45-49 female age group.

After the Awards ceremony we hurried home so we could get ready for round two... The Hogeye 1/2 in Fayetville. I have pictures and will try to post them later this evening.

Splits:
1- 9:11
2- 9:15
3- 9:18
4- 9:18
5- 9:10
6- 9:02
my garmin showed 6.36 miles instead of 6.2
.36-3:32
It always makes me happy when my last mile is my fastest! :)