My First 10K

Posted on Posted in Fitness

I turned 42 on Monday. I thought about getting a massage, but instead I signed up for the Boulder Spring Half as a birthday present to myself.  While I've done a 5K, a marathon and a half-marathon in the past, I'd never done a 10K before today. For the most part I've been lazy with my training, running a few times a week generally no more than 3 miles with perhaps half of my workouts being sprint intervals for a max of 2 miles. 

A friend of mine recently upgraded his Garmin Forerunner and donated his Garmin 305 to me. According to this very fun new training device, I had a great (for me) run.

There were 2000 of us there to run the half-marathon, 1o mile or 10K races. I started somewhere in the middle to last third of the pack and initiated the Garmin before I crossed the official start.

According to the Garmin, I ran  6.33 miles in 1:00.43,  for a pace of 9:35 per mile or 6.3 mph. This was an out and back run with the first half pretty much all uphill. Pretty much every mile I ran got a little bit faster.

  • mile 1: 10:39.88 (caught in the herd of 2000 people – some of the funnier people near me were literally "mooing" trying to break free) 
  • mile 2: 9:41.40 (finally broke free of the throng) 
  • mile 3: 10:00.02 (all uphill & trying to pace myself) 
  • mile 4: 9:22.44 (past the half way mark & beginning to run downhill)
  • mile 5: 9:14.47 
  • mile 6: 8:42.50 
  • last .33 miles: 3:02.23 

I really can't complain. This was a great run for me, especially given the paucity of my training. I did get a blister during the last mile but else felt really good. Of course, it's important to keep everything in perspective; the winner of the half marathon crossed the finish line in about 1 hour and 5 minutes. I don't have my official time yet, but am hoping it will be on the Boulder Spring Half website soon. 

The diversity of body types there also inspired me to refocus on my fitness training. It's time.

EDIT: They have posted the official results. I was bib # 3227.

I was 16 of 64 in my age group (women 40 to 49) with an official time of 59:49. Overall I was 148th out of about 410 runners and 71st for all women. I'd say the Garmin was quite accurate!