Today I ran in my second 10K, the 3rd annual St. Patty’s Day Kegs & Eggs 5K/10K with proceeds going to the Special Olympics of Nashville.  Last year was my first 10K and at the time my longest run; boy was I shocked during that run!  This time it was a different story as I managed things a lot better.

This was an afternoon race and wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (sometimes it’s nice to get these knocked out first thing in the morning).  The weather wasn’t the best as it was in the 40s with winds and rain!  Luckily the rain was mostly a drizzle during the race so it wasn’t that bad but those winds were nasty and almost took my hat off a few times (need to remember to tighten it up a bit next time).

Last year I ran my first 10K in 1 hour and 6 minutes.  This year I was looking to be at right around an hour.  It started at Bar Louie in The Gulch so I was expecting some hills and the hills were there!  We hit Charlotte Avenue off of 11th Avenue South and went straight up towards the Capitol.

I was expecting to get around 10 minutes a mile and when I hit my first mile right at 9 minutes I was feeling good.  Unfortunately this was a “run the course twice” 10K so as I was hitting the half-way point it was tempting to run fast with the 5K runners but knowing I had another 3.1 miles to go I kept things steady going into the “turn”.

I was right around 27 minutes at the half-way point so I knew the 1 hour goal was feasible (as I was really feeling good at this point).  I then thought maybe I could get in around 56-57 minutes so that’s what I was going for.

The next time up the hill on Charlotte Avenue I did pretty good.  I was actually able to pass some runners who seemed to have been caught up in the pace of the 5K finishers at the turn and I was able to stay in front of most of them.  Looking at my mile times my first mile was the fastest at 9:01 (I was at 4 minutes at the 1/2 mile mark and decided to slow things down a bit).  I then hit 9:18 and 9:23 for miles two and three.  Then for the last three miles I was 9:41, 9:36 and then actually finished even faster at 9:23.

I probably could have finished faster than 9:23 on the last mile but with a half-mile to go my right shoe came untied and it was the shoe which had my timing chip on it.  I didn’t really want to lose it and did my best to finish strong but yet keep my shoe on!  Not sure if it was the fact that it was an afternoon race or just that I’m getting better at managing my miles but this was a good race.

My unofficial time was 57:44 and that’s 9 minutes faster than my previous 10K so I’ll take that!  At the moment my next race isn’t until April 12th (another 10K) with the Music City Marathon on the 26th.  I may fit another race in there, but we’ll see.