Rex Lee 10K commentary

One thing I have learned as a runner is to be prepared for any type of weather. The weather report has a fair success, but sometimes can be rather off. Today was one of those days when the weather report was spot on. It was a fabulous morning. My kids were into being there and cheering me on which I appreciate. There were high-fives from each of them before the race began.

My pre-race jitters finally subsided and I settled into the pre-race excited anticipation. This 10K was not a test to see if I could run an actual 6 miles. I do that on some of my easy runs. This race was two-fold. The first was to see if all the training that I had done had paid off during the winter and the second was a start to the races I have planned for '09 thus far.

I had picked up my bib number, chip and shirt previously so we arrived at the race about 20 minutes before the starting cannon. There was sufficient time to do some warm-up jogging and then be in the starting crowd. The weather at race time was about 35 degrees with the sun starting to peak out from behind the mountains.

I was glad I opted to wear my jacket over my long sleeve shirt. The first two and a half miles were without the sun being up and were rather chilly. My fingers started thawing at about mile 3. At mile 3, the 10K portion of the race and the 5K portion of the race meet up for a small stretch. My 3 mile mark was a little after mile 1 for the 5K participants. Mile 3 was when the fast racers from the 5k went sprinting by. My thoughts arrogantly shouted out to these super sprinters "yeah, let's see you in a real race..." forgetting that I was once one of those participants although no where near that fast and that they could probably kick my butt in the 10k also.

There was a water station at mile 2,4,and just before mile 6. A 6 mile run for me is about where I will sip from my gatorade if I bring some, but for this short of a race, there was no need. Someone must not have gotten the memo that people running really don't need a 32 oz cup of water. Some of the water cups were bigger than my average soda that I get with a combo meal. The other possibility is that they ran out of the smaller cups on all those racers ahead of me.

The course ended on the track of the university so the last small section we raced around the track to finish in front of the bleachers. I saw my time as I was approaching and called forth every bit of energy I had left to get across the finish before the minute was up. I made it...49:40. My goal entering the race was to finish under 50 minutes with my average pace being 8:01...thus shaving :48 off my pace from last year. I can live with that as a starting point for my 2009 season.