Not sure why I have never done this race, it is such a great course and held such amazing memories for me. We ran right by my Auntie's restaurant that I spent so many family meals and parties at and where I had my first job working in the food industry pushing the dim sum cart!

I started about 3 people deep, knowing I wanted to get off to a nice hard start. Saw just one woman in front of me that I knew was doing about 6 min/miles so knew she was gone. I was determined not to look at my Garmin for any of the race and it was a great decision, because if I had seen 6:45's it would have scared me...As it was I pretty much kept that hard effort the whole way even up the nice hill from Kearny to Grant after the 5k peeps turned off to finish. Yikes, no wonder so many people did the 5k instead of the 10k! They get to avoid that hill!

I felt surprisingly strong on the second loop especially after the nice steep downhill on Stockton street towards Bay street. I kept my strides a bit smaller the second time down and it affected my quads a lot less than the first time. It was right about here at the 4 mile mark that I started to pick it up a little bit, I figure I can do anything for 15 minutes, so go hard to the finish. The last half mile includes another small uphill and I was conscious of passing 3 guys on this hill that I was positive were doing the 10k as I had been following them pretty much after we split off for the second loop. Kind of crazy because there were a lot of walkers at this point finishing the 5k so there was a bit of weaving in and calling on the left. The right turn onto Kearny Street felt amazing, I still had a good kick left, looked up and saw 42:xx ticking and couldn't believe it! I was pretty sure I couldn't do it on this course after the first loop, but I guess the downhills make up for the uphills on a looped course!

I was psyched because I knew for a fact that no women had passed me throughout the entire race so was pretty sure I'd get a podium. I almost had a mini heart attack when they announced that number 2 had a time of 43:09. Could the other woman have been doing the 5k? I never did see her, but she was so far ahead of me. Then they skipped me and called her up for first place. How disappointing! I went up and talked to the race organizer afterwards and they straightened things out. Apparently, I was somehow grouped with the men's due to mixing up my first and last names. Kind of disappointing as I have never actually done so well in a running race to podium overall, so I missed my chance for the big stage. Luckily it all got worked out.

Nothing at all, the strategy on this race was full throttle for the whole 10k, and then some extra if I had it at the end. If I wasn't in the middle of marathon training, I might not have the conditioning for it, but we've been doing lots of work in zone 4 for the past few months.

Hills? I haven't started hill training yet, so maybe I'll get a bit stronger on hills once we start adding hills.


Great race course with a fun atmosphere. Kind of old fashioned timing method where one person is sitting with a stop watch and calling out numbers and times, not the best when there are 1500 runners, and two different races going on, and a confusing finish area where some 5k people go down the wrong chute! But it's all good, I had tons of fun.