Great Pumpkin 10k

Went to bed exhausted last night after a long and stressful week of work - tired to the point that I felt like I might be coming down with something. So this morning when I woke up, and it was 20 degrees chillier than it was the previous morning, I told Jim that I was so-not-feeling this race. Donned my running shorts along with a tank top, covered by a long-sleeve tech shirt and hoped for the best as we made our way to Floyds Fork. The walk from the car to the start line was a brisk and chilly half-mile or so, but the sun felt great. Since I haven't been keeping up much running since the Bourbon Derby Half Marathon in June, I was a bit concerned about my performance. The Orange Theory sessions had definitely helped me in that race, but I had also completed the KDF Mini just a month and a half before. Not having a race under my belt for 4 months had me a little worried, and not having run any more than three miles (and even those were interval runs on the treadmill through OTF) I wondered if I could pull off a full 6.2 while maintaining a good attitude. But when the start line went off and I immediately fell into a 10 minute cadence, I had a positive feeling that this could be a good race. I planned to do my normal one mile run / one minute walk routine and felt good about that decision for the first mile and a half. Knowing that there was a steep hill coming up about 2.3 miles in, I decided to run through my mile 2 walk break just in case I had to walk any of the hill. Alas, that was exactly the case when halfway up I took a little break, and then another when I came upon a longer, yet less steep incline just ahead. Coming up on mile three I fell back into a good pace and my spirits were lifted even more when I realized that most of mile 4 would be going back down those dreaded hills. I got into another good groove and opted to walk for a little water stop just around the four and a half mile mark, which is when I looked down to see that I was just over 45 minutes into the race. Doing some math in my head, I realized that I probably couldn't beat my 10k PR of 1:01, but I could pull off a second-best which, considering the aforementioned lack of running, was alright with me. Cresting another small hill I passed mile 5 and was on to the finish. My left knee started bothering me a bit after that, but not enough to really slow me down and I managed to keep running through the discomfort. After passing the 6 mile marker I was ready for the home stretch and came in at a respectable 1:03:33. Although I haven't checked the exact time, I'm fairly certain my previous second-best was around 1:04:15. My splits were: 10:01, 10:09, 11:12, 9:52, 10:14 and 10:13 with a 9:36 pace for that last .2 miles. The fact that I had over a minute negative split, or a negative split at all, is amazing. And looking back at some of my earlier races this year, I've had pretty consistent negative splits, which is something I thought I'd never see. Overall, this was a great race. The course was awesome, the weather was good, and considering the cluster f*ck that it apparently was last year with it being the inaugural race I felt the organization was superb and I will definitely do this race again next year. Next up: The Bourbon Chase in less than one week!