Race Report: Dartmouth YMCA 10K Road Race

My final tune up race for the Manchester Half Marathon was today - the Dartmouth YMCA 10k. Drew got to my house around 1:30am after a trip for work to Vegas. We were all up in my house around 7am and out the door by 8am. Not sure if Drew got much (if any) sleep. After a stop at Tim Horton's for coffee and donuts we were on our way.

We got to the YMCA a bit before 9am, which gave us plenty of time to register, stretch, warm up and get acclimated to the lovely cold morning we had. They called us over for announcements - mainly procedural stuff. Mark Kruger from The Biggest Loser 5 was there and spoke a bit before the race. He said in the last year he has gone from 300 lbs to something WAY under 300lbs, A year ago he could barely walk a flight of stairs and today he was gonna run a 10k and how it doesn't matter if we are 1st or last...just that we do.

We walked up to the starting line....and about 2 minutes later we were off. The crowd spread out pretty quick and we all kind of fell into our places within the first mile. The first mile went quick. Drew had fallen a little behind me - not surprising after spending a week in Vegas. Right after the first mile I got passed by someone. The second mile was extremely fast. Somewhere in the second to third mile the hills started and I realized Mark Kruger was running next to me. He was running strong so I asked if I could tag a long for a bit. He was super nice and kept me strong through the hills.

Once we cleared the hills I needed to recover a bit so I thanked Mark for letting me hang around and off he went. Around mile 4 I started to feel better again and was able to pick up the pace. There was no marker (or people marking) the 5th mile so between mile 4 and the end I was kind of lost on where I was.

Right before the turn onto Gulf Rd, I felt two people running right behind me. After the turn, I kicked it into gear and took off for the finish. I mis-judged the distance from the turn to the finish. I was hoping to kick the last .2 of a mile and ended up doing the last 1/2 mile. After I got through I walked back to the road to cheer Drew on to the end.

Total Time: 48:36
Average: 7:51

Splits
0-1: 7:57.30
1-2: 7:16.80
2-3: 8:18.09
3-4: 7:14.44
4-6.2: 17:48.23 (avg 8:05)

During races I don't usually use my Ipod, but this race seemed a bit different and I'd knew I'd be alone for most of it. I listed to One Day as Lion on repeat. Gotta love anything with Zack De La Rocha....Next up Manchester Half Marathon - back to training tomorrow.