Ed: The following race report was written Oct 18, 2008. It's not entirely complete, and never posted til now. It was my last race and the last time I had put running shoes on. It was probably one of my best races.
My second 10K Zoo Run is in the books. I really enjoyed it today and have been thinking it should be part of my race plans every year, and I think Team Family might agree to it. Today's race went extremely well. I am very pleased with the effort, the results. I wasn't sure how I'd perform after having very little sleep this past week and having workload issues that left me more than a little upset this week, but it was like the crisp autumn air and seeing a couple of zoo animals made everything okay for an hour.
I only slept about 4.5 hours before this race, not much more than all the other days this week. When I woke up, I nibbled on half a bagel with peanut butter and swigged some Gatorade. I didn't feel good. My cousin drove my sister and I and on the way, we decided where to go the post-race meal.
We lined up. My cousin and sister had blue markers on their bibs, indicating they were in the last corral, the 1:00:00+ group. I had a green marker, one corral ahead of them. When you sign up for these things -- and for me that's usually months ahead before I've actually really considered any kind of training plan -- they sometimes ask when you plan to finish. I guess I thought I'd do it in under an hour because I've done that once and would like to repeat. Again, this is like two weeks ago with the half-marathon: I lined up where I shouldn't.
The three of us started together. I kept pace with my sister, who still has weak ankles, and then left her after we'd completed the first kilometer. She was planning on not aggravating her ankles, despite the elastic foot wrap. We wished her luck and said we'd meet at the finish line. She urged me to run the distance without her, so she wouldn't be holding me back from improving my time since I would otherwise stick with her from start to finish. Today, I would be making sure my cousin didn't slack off. I mostly didn't but I gave in to her wish to walk for a minute around the 7K mark. I think I could have otherwise ran the distance nonstop but it was nice to run a race with my cousin. We haven't signed up for that many together, but every time we have, we start together and separate (usually I was behind -- be it bladder, conditioning, or sticking with my sister). I left my cousin shortly after 9K. I had a lot of energy left -- who knows where it was coming from -- and took advantage. As I was doing the final K, I thought I could run the whole course again.
We left the zoo and did the same thing we did last year (sadly without Yumke who was resting between marathons or something) and went Chinese styles -- noodles, a big bowl of congee with fried dough on the side, and lots of cups of green tea. Funny thing this year, my parents and a friend were also coincidentally at the same restaurant. Bonus -- they paid!
Chip time: 1:07:34.2 (last year 1:14:37.9)
Pace/km: 6:52 (last year: 7:38)
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