Tom's Blog

Sorry it's been a while. Just haven't been up to writing lately. Things have been a little stagnant lately. I've been running OK, just not really pushing myself.

This morning I ran the 7th Annual Barnyard Dash 10K at Huber's. We arrived around 7:00 am to pickup our packets and shirt. Shirt is pretty nice by the way. And we began watching arriving runners. Seemed to be a lot of Cross Country runner types. While waiting, we finally met Lenore and some of her peeps. Pretty cool lady. I bet you are a lot of fun to hang out with.

As we approached 8:00 am, it became obvious that the race was not going to begin on time. Nobody even seemed sure where the race was going to start from. By about 5 after or so, things got sorted out. The course was also not closed. They had a classic car show going on as well, and as we were lining up there were still cars coming directly toward us on the road we were about to run on.

Once they gave the start command, things actually smoothed out. we actually did not encounter too much traffic. I started out feeling pretty good, but when I reached the 1 mile point at 7:48, I was pretty sure I started too fast. I still felt good though so I stuck with it. As I started closing in on the 2nd mile I was starting to feel my pace slow. Uh oh, still 4+ miles to go. I finished the 2nd mile in 8:12. I could still see Joe up ahead of me, and I was trying to keep him there. At about the 2.5 mile point I fell apart for a bit and actually had to walk for a bit to regroup. I recomposed, caught my breath, and started running again. I finished the 3rd mile in 9:08. After that, I started to pull myself back together. My next 3 miles were 8:44, 8:25, and 8:15. Not bad decreasing my splits and the last mile had some pretty decent little get your attention hills. The last .2 was all a slight uphill into the parking lot and the finish shoot. I decided to just run as hard as I could muster. I was hurting, but refused to think about it. I looked, and I could see the clock. It was at 51:57. My PR time was 52:13. I still had a shot. I kept my head down and just ran. I didn't see what the clock time was, but when I hit the Garmin at the finish line it said 52:08. Oh that is close. I will wait to see the official time before calling it a PR though.

All in all, it was pretty well put on. I wouldn't have minded one more water stop around the 2 - 2.5 mile mark, but it wasn't bad. The weather was decent with light cloud cover, and low humidity. I definitely think I will run this one again. I expected more hills than we encountered thankfully.