Mini 10K 2012 Race Recap!

Spoiler alert: I ran a 10K this morning–and PR-ed!

I hadn’t really written about it because I really had no idea how it was going to go. I’m running more consistently, but I haven’t really been training more consistently. Which is really fine by me but doesn’t necessarily bode well for PR-ing.

Anyway. I was excited for today, but had no idea what to expect.

I ran the Mini 10K last year (and the year before) and had so much fun, so I decided to repeat it this year.

I met up with Ashley and we took the subway up to the park together. This race starts at Columbus Circle, which I love, because I live on the West Side, too.

Walking to meet Ashley, I checked my blog to see what my 10K PR was. It was 56:51, a 9:08 pace. In the year since setting that PR, I’ve definitely gotten faster. I’ve run three sub-2:00 halfs and a handful of 4-milers at 8:xx paces, so I knew that unless things went really badly, there was likely a PR in the cards for me. I flirted with the idea of checking Tina’s blog for her recent 10K PR to give myself a time to shoot for since we run roughly around the same pace, but I decided to run my own damn race. Turns out hers was 50:12, which would have been a little fast for me anyway.

As Ashley said, we split up right away. I went for one last nervous pee and made my way to the corrals.

WOMEN’S RACES FOR THE WIN. I was in the second corral. I am never in the second corral.

There were totally creepers in the Trump Hotel and that apartment building looking down at all of is. Including some super-creepy dude in a robe who obviously loved that there were thousands of women in spandex below him.

Dori! We talked about PRs for a few minutes, and she told me it was 53-something. So much for running my own race. 53-something sounded like a good target for me.

Being in the second corral, we were able to hear the speakers fairly well. As this is the 40th anniversary of the race, there were lots of cool speakers on hand: Katherine Switzer and Nina Kuscsik who started the race; Jacqueline Dixon, who won the first Mini 10K; and Desiree Davila, U.S. Olympic Marathon team member. I’m not usually all rah-rah girl power, but hearing from Switzer and Kuscik, two women who paved the way for women’s running, was awesome.

My Garmin, on the other hand, was a jerk. It didn’t get satellites at the start, and so I started the race with no satellites and was planning to just use it as a stopwatch. By some miracle, the satellites kicked in immediately.

I definitely didn’t have a pacing plan, so I ended up going out fast (7:55, 7:52!). When I saw 7-minute miles on my watch, I decided that I’d run hard while I had it, probably dial back a bit in the middle, and kick it back up for the end. It was the first race I tried out my New Balance 1600s, and I absolutely loved racing in them.

I hit the 5K mark around 25 minutes, and was already starting to fade from the Harlem Hills. I finished mile 3 in 8:08, and my speed dropped a ton in the fourth mile to 9:22. Once I past the Mile 4 mile-marker, there were much fewer climbs, and I was able to get some speed back and finish mile 5 in 8:36. Once I past the 5th mile marker, I gave it all I had. I remember seeing 42:00 on my watch at mile 5, and knew I could run 1.2 miles in about 10 minutes and finish in 52-ish.

52:22!!!! I was so happy for a PR.

And then I grabbed brunch at Whym with a big group of other runners. I had the whole wheat French toast…and a beer, and Meggie and I split some turkey sausage while she tried to convert me to join the 5K revolution. It went as well as me convincing Christine to move back to NYC.

God, I can’t wait to start marathon training. Is it July 9 yet??