Folsom Firecracker 10K

Last year, I completed two 5Ks on back-to-back days. This year I went for two 10Ks in a span of five days. I think this year's task was tougher. However, in both cases, I set a new PR on the first race.

The weather was pleasant enough for the Folsom Firecracker 10K. My plan was to start off slower than I did for the Run 4 Independence and then attempt to hold my pace fairly steady throughout the run. I was able to accomplish the first part but not the second. I think I was probably hindered in part by not being "fully recovered" from Saturday's 10K. Additionally (according to RunKeeper), the Folsom Firecracker course had 50% more climbing than Run 4 Independence, and a lot of the climbing came in the second half.

Looking at the mile split times, we see that 2/3^rds of the additional time I took in the Folsom Firecracker was taken in the first mile:

	Pace		+/-
Mile	R4I	FF	Mile	Overall
1	08:08	08:51	-43	-43
2	09:05	09:20	-15	-58
3	09:36	09:40	-4	-62
4	09:48	09:44	+4	-58
5	10:11	10:03	+8	-50
6	09:52	10:09	-17	-67
+	02:08	02:09	-1	-68

I attempted to pump myself up after the fourth mile when there was still a chance of beating my time from the Run 4 Independence (I was averaging 9:23 a mile and just needed to average 9:28 over the run), but I didn't have enough left in the tank to make it happen. However, I was able to still get myself across the line in less than an hour, and I will take that as a moral victory:

This was the first race for me in 2012 that was a repeat from 2011, and I posted a pace faster than last year's (5.83 mph). This gets me halfway to my goal of improving my pace on two events from last year.

I mentioned in my post about the Run 4 Independence that according to RunKeeper, the course was 1/20^th of a mile longer than 10K. The same thing was true with the Folsom Firecracker course. My guess is that the impreciseness of the phone GPS is more so the problem.