Started in the first corral after the elites and was able to get reasonably far up so I crossed the line within about 20 seconds of the official start. At least where I was, the corrals seemed to work pretty well--only passed a small handful of people who obviously had no business being that far up front. And so, while it was certainly crowded, it didn't effect my running much through the race. The rain had held off around the start time, but began shortly after we got going and stayed mostly light, but constant, for the rest of the race.

The first mile I made a point to stay easy, especially as it starts on a slight downhill. The crowds helped a bit in that respect because I made sure not to worry about jumping past people who were running "too slow" at this stage. At about 1.5mi, konichiwa comes up from behind me and says hi (again, pretty amazing in those crowds!). We ran together for a little bit, but eventually I lost him while focusing on navigating around other runners--he was looking to run around 7:00 miles and I had already dropped a bit below that as well.

I was running very comfortably through the first 5 miles and didn't really start to "push" at all until the raced reached City Hall (a little over half way). There was a girl who ran by me there and I decided to try to stay with her as a way of forcing my pace up a little. I was still pretty comfortable for the next couple miles and was generally still moving past people.

I lost my pacer through a water station with just over a couple miles to go, but by then I was stating to feel the work being done so I didn't need much help pushing it anymore. The last mile began to get tough, but I was still holding onto my pace for the most part and only a very few people passed me on the way to the finish while I was still moving through most runners.

Finished feeling pretty good about my run. :-)

Probably push a little harder a little earlier.

Wear a thinner sock. Mine were getting pretty water-logged by the half way point and made my feet feel heavier than I would have liked.

Just walked through the finish area, grabbing a water and some food. Then hopped on a shuttle bus back to the parking lot. Didn't want to hang out too long as I knew I'd start to get cold once I cooled off from the run.


Wasn't trained specifically for this raqce, but mostly I just wasn't sure how to pace it--never raced 10 miles and hadn't raced anything at all since the marathon last fall.

Still, maybe I could have found 15-30 seconds, while going too hard could have easily cost me more than that in the other direction. So not disappoinmted at all with how I chose to pace it this time.


This is a BIG race. But at least from my position (admiteddly, fairly far 'up' among the throngs), it seemed very well run. Even on a cool and damp day, the crowds were pretty enthusiastic. On a nice day, I imagine it would be a blast--especially in S. Philly.