This is one of the premier early-season races around here...they've been doing it since the late 70s. It's a very hilly course, and pretty competitive with about 1500 runners. I ran this race back in 2009 and finished in 52:49, which was my first 10K race in over a decade.

Going into today, I was gunning for sub-:50, which would be my first at that pace since high school and where I was expecting to be given my training.

The plan based on the terrain of this course was to ease in to the first mile (uphill almost the whole way), hammer the 2nd mile (downhill almost the whole way), try to hold a 8:00 pace through mile 4.5 (uphill those two miles or so), and then start kicking just after the 5 mile marker (downhill to the finish). Racing at plan would put me solidly into mid :49s.

First mile was kinda all over the place...got caught up in traffic at the beginning and just tried to settle into an even pace, 8:01 split was fine given the uneven start and it being uphill.

Second mile was downhill so I picked it up trying to keep my HR/PRE down as much as possible. 7:33 pace was a little slower than plan but just fine.

Third and fourth miles are the HTFU portions of the race. Two long uphill sections (both about a little over a half mile long), the first on a curvy road where you can't see the top of the hill. I wanted to maintain 8:15 if I could but that just wasn't going to happen...but the overall miles worked out fine at 7:50 and 8:17.

Fifth mile is through a neighborhood with lots of trees which kept the wind down. I was starting to get pretty tired here but I knew the real effort finish for this course was at about mile 5.1, where the course goes downhill pretty hard to the finish. So I pushed this as best I could and muscled out a 8:17 mile.

I was really looking forward to mile 6 and the final kick, because it's almost all downhill. Starting picking up the pace as we crested the hill past mile 5 and opened up to about a 7:30 pace, was down to about 6:40 by the bottom of the hill and I could really feel the LA build up in my legs.

1/3 of a mile to go and we get about a 200 yard uphill section that all of a sudden had a 30 mph gusting headwind. The wind had been way less of a factor than I thought it would be all day, until this point. Thankfully we were looking at a 1/4 to go so I kept my cadence up, got over the crest of the hill, and then kicked to the finish with a mild sprint.

Looked down at my Garmin and was pleased with the 49:08 time, PR at this distance by over a minute and PR on this course by almost 4 minutes.

This was the first time I used my Garmin 305 in a race...I usually just use my old school Timex Ironman, but having the instant pace data (sort of) gave me the feedback I needed to know when to push it a bit uphills to stay under 8:30/9:00 or whatever, and kept me from going too fast downhill. Now if I could just get comfortable with the HR strap I'd be all set.

This is a great beginning to the race year...just gotta figure out how to run this pace after a 1 mile swim and 25 mile bike!

Jogged around a bit, sipped some water. Watched my wife's aunt finish (this was like the 20th time she's done this race).

Hit the after race food and beer area...good stuff but apparently the runners in the race were hitting the beer line too much because they ran out. Watched the awards ceremonies and headed over to my wife's cousin's restaurant for an early lunch.


Wind was tough but honestly not that much of a factor. I probably could have tapered a bit more but I was training right through this race.


Always a well-run race...but they only 12 porta-potties for like 1500 runners and about 80-100 people were still in line when they called everyone over to the start line. They also ran out of beer pretty quickly, but no big deal since after all, it was like 9:30 in the morning. :)