Run for Courage 10K: A New Personal Record

What a beautiful day for a run! It may have been a touch cold when I arrived an hour early (to ensure parking), but that faded away by a half hour before race day. I set my 5K PR (personal record) at this event last year and looked forward to doing the same for my 10K PR this year.

The festivities started by the presentation by a color guard and the signing of the national anthem. It was a nice touch. After some speeches about the cause, we did some quick stretching, and then the 10K was underway.

I didn't get the greatest start to the race due to confusion about lining up that was mostly my fault. The organizers had volunteers with minutes per mile signs in the starting area to indicate where you were suppose to line up, but those were meant for the 5K runners (starting after us). They did announce that the 10K runners were to move to the front, but I thought that was more so to get the 5K runner to move back. Regardless, it didn't cause too much trouble for me: for the first half mile I had to weave around a number of people but there wasn't much slowdown in that process.

I finished the first mile in 8:30 which is typical for me for a good 10K. Usually I start off fast and fade back. Not so today as my second mile was actually better than the first at 8:25. I faded a little bit starting with mile three, but even then, miles 3-5 were all ahead of the 9:26 pace I needed to set a new PR. I rallied back in the sixth mile and finished really strong at the end. According to my iPhone, the race was a tenth of a mile short, but even if that's true, I would have decimated my PR regardless:

	Pace		+/-
Mile	Target	Actual	Mile	Overall
1	09:28	08:30	+58	+58
2	09:28	08:25	+63	+120
3	09:28	08:51	+37	+157
4	09:28	08:53	+35	+191
5	09:28	09:06	+22	+213
6	09:28	08:39	+49	+262
+	02:01	00:41	+80	+342

I think the 41 seconds for the "+" (0.21 miles) makes the case that the race was short. To accomplish that, one would have to run at 18.4 mph. Granted, my phone could have under-tracked some of the distance throughout the race. I think mile 4 is where I passed the mile marker well before my phone alerted me of the completed mile.

Here's the badge for today's race:

I'd be curious to know how many runners today had similar surprising results in today's race. Although I think a lot of my improvement came from all of the training I've been doing for the Four Bridges Half Marathon. And it didn't hurt that this was one of the flatter runs that I've done.