SJCS 10km Race - 2011 Race # 2

Per and I were privileged enough to be invited to the press conference of this event some weeks ago at ROX and got for ourselves some race kits from the event organizers.

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This was the perfect race for me for the weekend given I had to do a long run before my first 21km for the year (Condura) and I knew I had to be somewhat ready for it in terms of the distance I had to conquer and the lack of mileage that I had been doing this month.

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I was optimistic to finish a total distance of 18km with a lot of walk breaks involved and I started that by first doing a slow 5km jog around my house, went back home to change into drier clothes (and bugging Per in the process) and driving myself to MOA for the 6:00am Gun Start for the 10km race. (Per decided to back out from the race at the last minute.)

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I wasn't sure where the race start was but opted to look for a parking space first and to figure out the starting line later. Just my luck that I parked some 500meters away and I had some three minutes to go to get to the starting line. Oh Crap! This will definitely be included in my 18km target distance for the day!

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I heard the emcee speak "last one minute to go before race starts... last 30 seconds...", which lead me to run faster. Double Crap! This is sooo wrong: speed running even before the race starts! But what would be worse for me was starting the race late.

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I made it on time (for a measly 2 seconds) before the race began and I ran off again, this time with all the 10km runners.

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I thought right then how everything was wrong from the start - how could I run fast when I was already tired doing my 5km jog + 500 meters sprint before the race? Ordinarily, that was fine for this RUNNING FATBOY but this was called Race for Place for a reason! And although I didn't really believe I could make it to the top 500 finishers to get the medal, I was secretly hoping that I would come in 490th (or thereabouts) place to be able to bag it. Of course, this secret hope came about at the time I thought I would just run 10km for the day!

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At the first water station, I gladly stopped by to get a drink of water. As guaranteed before at the presscon some weeks ago, there were a lot of water stations for this race, which was quite good for us runners.

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My desire for the finisher medal got to the point where I counted the runners who were ahead of me but gave up at 20 as figured I would be crazy if I counted all the way to 500! I would instead do my thing: focus on my arm swings, high knee raises, proper foot landing, breathing, feeling if there is pain on my left foot, etc., all the while following the directions of the 10km route.

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It was nice running here at MOA again and it has been a while since I joined a race here. Weather was perfect (not too hot, not too cold) and there were enough marshals to make sure we don't get lost. An ambulance was also roaming about, which was another good point for the race organizers.

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At one point, I gave up on my quest for the finisher medal and just decided to do the run to the best of my abilities. If I make it, that would be awesome. But if I didn't, that is okay too. As long as I finish strong and painfree, then I should already be happy with my achievements.

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But...

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Everytime, a runner would overtake me, at the back of my mind I would think, "what if he is the 500th runner?". So I would run again and do little walk breaks and if I do take them, it would be for only 10 -20 seconds before I run again.

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Even with this thought, I did not sprint or run after them as I didn't want to be too tired today.

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So I ran, and I ran, and I ran, and thinking that this 10km distance seemed to be too long, I would look at my Garmin and see that it just showed a distance of 8km. GRRRRRR!!!!

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Anyway, to cut the story short, I made it to the finish line at a time of 1:05++. Not really fast for me but given my circumstances, I was very happy by it.

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I ran another 3km around MOA complex at super slow pace of 8:30 - 9 min/km pace, did a lot of stretching at one of the empty parking lots, drove home to pick up Per to have breakfast at our new favorite weekend morning place (hint: it's at BGC) to replenish burned calories and went back home again to relax.

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18km Target Achieved!

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As for the finisher medal, I have yet to wait for the results to see my place in the 10km category but I got what I secretly hoped for:

Yeah Man!!!!
I can now proudly say that I Raced for Place and I got it! Best of all was waking up the next day with no muscle or foot pain. God is definitely Good (no foot pain was one of our answered prayers).

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Kudos to the race organizers for this fun run!