I did the Cary Road Race 10K with Zack and Ron yesterday but in the end the course was not setup correctly. The organizers announced that the course was short for the 10K but did not say how much. According to my Nike+ system it was one full kilometer off. Since the course consisted of two loops that means that the cones for the turnaround were about .25 kilometers off if my math is correct. One kilometer divided by four, twice for the first lap and twice for the second. This means that everyone’s times were off as well as the mileage pace. My average pace according to the Nike+ was 8:13 per mile and the distance was 5.56 miles.
I did make the mistake of saying that people were taking it too seriously when I was checking the results. I didn’t realize that I was standing with three other people who had won prizes and one was upset because he thought he had set his PR for the 10K by breaking 40 minutes after twenty years of running. I explained to him what I meant when I relayed a story Charlie was telling me of how there was a guy going along after he had finished the 10K and clapping for people still running telling them they were doing great but weren’t running a 10K. Even the other guy agreed that was pretty low class. I’m still over 7=10 minutes behind even getting into third place in my age group and know that I’m not competitive to the real runners so the mis-measurement didn’t affect me as much as others. Even though the guy seemed cool with my explanation, I still should’ve been more sensitive with my remarks. We went through my Ipod to look at my run to calculate that the course was roughly a kilometer off.
The race was pretty fun but really tiring due to some strategically placed hills. Since it was a 10K I decided to wear my Nike+ system so that Id have something to listen to and I had been wanting to try it on an actual race. In the end it was a good decision because it kept the actual splits and average pace that I couldn’t have gotten from the official results due to the bad measurement of the course. The race began by going up a fairly steep long incline to the turnaround point (misplaced cone) before dropping back down to a greenway that circled a lake. The lake portion was fairly flat and fast but halfway around I saw that the leaders were heading back up the hill and I then realized we were doing two laps of the 5K course and that the hill was coming again. Right after the lake there was this short, maybe10 feet long, steep 60-70% incline back to the road. That little hill was killer on my legs. The course went back to the starting line and then doubled back to repeat.
The second lap was brutal on that long hill, my heartrate stayed over 170 the whole length. I usually don’t have issues with hills but this one seemed to get to me. I made good use of my power song on the Ipod as I grinded the hill out. On the way back down I passed Ron with a huge grin on his face heading up the hill. I couldn’t help but tell him to stop smiling, he knew I was kidding. I ended up hitting the power song again on that short steep hill after the lake to get me up it and psyched up for my sprint to the finish. I saw the start line and started my sprint and gobbled up about 10 runners and started coming to a stop when everyone started yelling to keep going. I realized then, and was highly highly pissed to find out, that the actual finish was a little further on down a path in the woods and then a little kick up to the end. I probably should’ve checked the course map but it never occurred to me that there would be a trick on the finish. Charlie who was waiting to do the 5K was standing there and said he could tell I wanted to kill someone. I ended up getting passed by everyone I sprinted by to the finish plus new people. I was hating life and fighting not to walk to the finish cause i was completely spent. Ron rolled in about two minutes behind me, I actually expected him to run me down after the hill but somehow I kept the lead. Zack came in about five minutes after that.
We all decided that we couldn’t bandit the 5K with Charlie and do that hill again so waited for him to finish his run. He ended up getting his best 5K time and we had been told that the course was corrected for the 5K. I found out tonight though that the results are up that it was short too, he won’t be too thrilled about that.
Cary Road Race Results
http://www.athlinks.com/events/22409/2007-Cary-Road-Race.aspx
