Haven't wanted to write this recap for whatever reason, but since I now need to also do the May round-up as well as the week 22 recap shortly ... I figured I best get on this chronologically.
This was the fourth year in a row running the BolderBOULDER. Every year I'd gotten a PR. I was hoping for one this year, too.
As Brandon mentioned in his recap, we left a little later in the morning than we should have (though we thought we were fine. by now, you'd think we'd know what time to leave for boulder, but apparently not) and it was a little stressful parking and getting to the Starbucks in the Twenty-Ninth Street shopping center. However, I've come a long way in learning to control the things I can, and letting go of the things I can't. I knew we'd still get parking in time to go off for our wave and drop off everything at the FedEx Mobile Locker. If we missed Starbucks, we missed Starbucks.
It turned out, obviously, that we had plenty of time to do everything. I should mention at this point that something seemed to be slightly off in the gastrointestinal system. I have a nervous colon as it is on race morning, but this? This wasn't good. I pooped (once or twice; can't remember) before I left the house, pooped again at Starbucks and my stomach still didn't seem to be happy after that. I finished about 2/3rds of my tall iced coffee and probably less than half of my multigrain bagel.
We dropped off our stuff at the FedEx Mobile Lockers (SO glad they kept those, even in the aftermath of Boston) and got in our wave with plenty of time. I sort of felt like I needed to poop again, but at that point, there was no time - we were off.
(though i didn't stop, i will say that the first bank of porta-potties we passed were very tempting, but the competitor in me said screw it. thankfully, i didn't come to regret that.)
Mile one felt good, but it ended up being way too fast. The first K was hit in 5:11; yeah, no way can I run a 51:00 10K these days. Or ever. Noticing that time, we slowed it down and hit the mile marker point in 8:49.55.
Mile two was slower, but we were still managing okay. I still hadn't found my legs, either, which was frustrating. 9:24.73 as we hit the mat.
Mile three is the shitty mile. I say this in every BB10K recap because it's TRUE every year. Also fairly typical is that it was our only mile that wasn't sub-10: 10:10.63. Some year I'll shrink that down ...
Mile four has the highest point in the course but is otherwise unremarkable. I was walking more and overheating (and starting to take in a bit of water, but mostly on my head), but I was keeping a close on eye on our K splits and we were still on pace for sub-60:00, which at this point, was all I cared about. We brought the pace back down, though - 9:33.25.
Mile five saw Brandon with another shoulder issue. He had one about this point last year - right before we made the turn on to Pearl and did again this year, but with a different shoulder. We slowed down a bit and I got behind him to try and work it out. I like to think I was successful enough to help get him through the race. For me, it was all about grinding it out - 9:37.02.
Mile six (and i'm guessing the .2 as well) is Folsom up to the finish. Brandon wanted to run it all - I couldn't breathe well enough to do it. I felt like this entire last mile was me just trying to stave off an asthma attack, running at the limits of my lungs. I managed to run up Folsom, slowing down on the descent into the stadium to try and breathe and then just forced it into Folsom Field. It was a reversal of roles in that Brandon took off and I couldn't catch him. I ran as hard as I could and once again, almost puked. I crossed the line with my final split as 9:55.71. My watch said 59:15, which would have been a one second PR if it held true. Luckily, the official time gave me a bit of a cushion.
We left the stadium hurting, got our little commemorative lunch bags of snacks, picked up our stuff from the mobile locker (changing into glorious flip-flops), checked out the expo, stopped for more coffee and went home.
Final Stats:
Time: 59:12.87
Pace: 9:31/mi
Overall Rank: 11372/43500 (top 26%)
Gender Rank: 3757/23293 (top 16%)
Division Rank: 147/611 (F29)(top 24%)
Although I PRed, I was not happy with this. I felt like I could have done a lot better. I missed the goal I had set for myself this year (sub-59) and I think maybe I could have done that. I know that the potential was definitely there. I'm not sure if I should sign up for another stand-alone 10K to try to hit it, either. I also have to tell myself that in the grand scheme of things, this was actually an early season race for me. My main race this year is in mid-November - I haven't come close to peaking and when I think of it that way, I guess I have to be happy with this result.
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