Chattahoochee Road Runners 10k - New PR

On Saturday March 3rd I participated in the Chattahoochee Road Race 10k. This was a bit far from my house. A little farther than I prefer to go, but the pain of not going would have outweighed the pleasure of going (Thanks Tony Robbins). Plus everyone was going to be there - the Foothills club, most of the ATC competitive team, and maybe some surprises (ZAP Fitness was a no-show, but Joseph Chirlee was there and won).

I got out of bed at 5:05am, got ready, and decided I wanted to hear some specific music for the long ride down, so I burned a CD. Good call there. Left the house at 5:44am, and got there at 6:35am. At that time there was plenty of parking and no line to get my race number.

I hung around in the car for a bit and saw some people I knew around 7:30. I did some warmup running, and tried to get as close to starting line as I could. This year had about 1250 finishers. The start time was 8am. Even though I was close to the starting line, when the gun went off it still took me 11 seconds to reach it.

I ran an even race. My overall pace was 7:28/mile. Mile 1 was 7:22, Mile 2 was 14:48. I don't remember what mile 3 was, but the 5k was in the 23's. Mile 4 was a little under 30:00. I kept up the pace, particularly since the last 2 miles are downhill. Actually they are extremely downhill. Downhill running isn't my forte, and in races I usually lose a few spots on the downhills, where I may gain a spot or two on an uphill. However, in this race I knew there was about a 200 ft elevation drop in the last two miles. Even though this part of the course was new to me (this is the only part I hadn't run and driven), it was on. My Garmin was showing 5-something pace for the big downhill after about 4.5 miles. I forget what mile 5 split was. Usually I remember all splits, but I was in a zone for this race, and all I took note of was the fact that the splits were better than my previous bests.

I finished in 46:20. This is a PR for me. My previous PR was 48:03 on 1/1/07. This is definitely a great course for a PR, with the elevation loss between the start and finish. Although maybe not so good on my knees (so far I'm ok, but next week's running will tell).

I've broken through in the last week, with a 10k PR this week (103 seconds faster than my previous 10k PR) and a 5k PR last week (37 seconds faster than my previous 5k PR).

After the race I took the bus back to start, but didn't go to the awards. At home, I waited impatiently for the results to be posted on the website. I finished #326 of 1269. In my age group, I was 50 of 137.

Overall the race was great. Only thing is I would have liked to have the beginning at the starting line rather than just Gun time.