Ukrop's Monument Avenue 10k - Run

When I was first looking at this race, I was encouraging my husband (Andy) to do this with me. He was interested in the idea, but as it drew closer, he backed out and eventually wasn't able to register. At packet pickup on Thursday night, he ran into a friend from work who was with another friend. The friend of a friend picked everything up, but wouldn't actually be able to run today. So, my husband decided to do it. I was really glad he was there. We didn't intend to do it together, but it worked out that way.

We were in Wave H, which is the people who predicted their time would be an hour. This was the largest wave of people. Quite honestly, I don't think most of these people had any clue what it is like to run a 10k in an hour. That was the impression that I got from the majority of the conversations around us. Whatever. The whole race had 20,000 entrants, so they did wave starts. I think we started about 21 minutes behind the offical clock.

At the start, Andy and I planned to stay together for the first mile or two. He didn't think he could run the whole thing. I was going to get faster after that. So, we kind of hung back. We got passed a lot. Not too surprising. It seems to happen a lot.

The first mile went pretty well. We noticed that our hamstrings were a little tight from standing for so long before the start, so we did what we could to loosen them up while we were running. It was pretty uneventful. Split for mile 1: 12:00.

During the second mile, we started noticing that it was getting a lot warmer. We also noticed that some of the people who passed us were walking and looked not so good. About 5 minutes into the second mile, Andy dropped back. I kept going and my current pace. Split for mile 2: 11:00

About halfway through mile 2, I noticed that I was starting to get a little bit dizzy and really really warm. Not a very good sign. I really hadn't hydrated as much as I should have, but I thought I would be okay. I was starting to think that I might not be. So, I slowed down a lot. Apparently, enough that Andy, who had sped up, was able to catch up to me. We ran at the current pace until mile 3.

Mile 3 had water and powerade, so I dumped water on my head and drank 2 cups of powerade. We walked through mile 3 and 4 because I was feeling so sick that I honestly thought I might pass out. There were several people along the side of the course who were getting oxygen, IVs, etc. I didn't want to get a trip to the hospital, so walking seemed like the better option.

At mile 4 we got some more water/powerade. Also got sprayed by a hose by one of the residents in the area, which felt great. Ran mile 4 in 11:00. Felt ok, but still not great. It was definitely a bit of a struggle to get through.

We decided to walk through the first half of mile 5 and then run the rest of the course. This part of the course started getting shadier so we were a lot cooler and there were more people outside their houses with hoses or just handing out cups of water.

Once we got to mile 6, we could see the finish line so we started running faster. We crossed the finish line holding hands. :)

I'm really glad that I finished and that we were able to do it together. I thought I was going to have to be there more for support for him, but it looks like it was the other way around.

I should have hydrated way more in the days before the race. I was at a conference on Thursday and Friday that started early in the morning, so I've been very tired and drinking lots of coffee. I should have been drinking lots less caffeine and way more water. Getting more sleep in the past few days helped a bit too.

Walked around in the park at the finish line. Got some bananas, powerade, and water and ate that. Stretched a bit. Watched some teenages try to carry cardboard boxes full of cases of full throttle back to their cars rather unsuccessfully.


The main thing that interefered with my performance was my hydration level. I think I might have been bordering on dehydration or heat exhaustion at some point while I was running.


It felt like everything was sort of chaotic when it comes to this race, but there are 20,000 people doing it and it's a fairly small area. It goes through residentiall neighborhoods and all of the people come out to support the runners.