Today I ran in the Nashville Hot Chocolate 15K in support of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Nashville.  This was my first 15K and the longest run I have ever done.  Last year I ran my first 10K and I approached it all wrong…too fast too early.  This time I went into the race with the goal of an 11 minute per mile pace and was going to just keep it slow and steady.

The weather reports kept changing right up until the day of the race and if the forecast would have stuck with that of rain I would have been worried (initially was cloudy and a high of 46, then chance of rain which turned to snow with a high in the low 30’s and finally cloudy with a high of 23).  I still felt an 11 minute per mile pace would be perfect. I started out at a good pace and at the 1 mile mark my running app informed me I was at a 10 minute 20 sec pace.  This felt good so I stayed with it.

The course was full of small hills and once it hit the Broadway/West End strip of the course, it really got interesting.  When I ran in the Country Music Marathon last year the starting point was at West End Avenue near Centennial park and the course headed towards downtown, this course got on Broadway off of Rosa Park’s Boulevard and went straight down to Centennial Park.  So in the Country Music Marathon it was a just a straight shot down West End to Broadway.  This was a down and back and all I could think about when going down the hills was I was going to need to come back up them after taking a jaunt around Centennial Park…uggh.

I was doing really good keeping a 10:20 to 10:40 pace up until around the 5.5 mile mark.  This was near Park Plaza by Centennial Park and I did not realize it was going all the way down Park Plaza up towards the 28th Street bridge, over it and then back.  I got to mile 7 and from there is was just determination.  I was keeping my pace pretty well but did go over the 11 minute mark during mile 7 – 8.  Going back through those hills on the way back towards Broadway was brutal.

Once I hit mile 8 though I knew it was just over a mile to go and it was here I just felt like my body was on cruise control.  The last half mile was pretty much all down hill so that was nice.  I felt good when I crossed the finish line and was glad that I actually just ran a 15K.  So after completing that, I know that the upcoming half-marathon is going to be 4 miles longer.  That’s another 40 some minutes of running and will definitely be a test of will power.

My official time was 1:39:17.44 and I finished 1055 out of 1834 runners.  Not bad and now I have 20K worth of races already for 2014!