Bobby Birdsong Memorial Levelland Lope

“The long run is what puts the tiger in the cat.” –Bill Squires

Saturday morning I woke up at 5:15 to make sure I had ample amount of time to eat a little breakfast and get ready for the race. I was pretty nervous because I knew I had set the bar pretty high for this race. We left for the race around 6:30 and arrived at the starting line at about 7:10. I paid my race fee, went to the restroom, then my hubbie & I walked around the South Plain College campus. Their track was pretty nice.
I jogged a little to warm up and stretched then got to the starting line. I was ready to get this thing over with. The gun went off and I started the race! I felt pretty good, but I thought I might be running a little faster than I need to. I had planned on running the first two miles at 7:20 pace, the second two at 7:15, and the last two at 7:10. The first mile came in 7:07. Too fast. It was here that the two milers turned around to head back to the finish.
The second mile is where I started to feel the hurt. I was running against the wind and on a slight incline. I was a little excited about this because it seemed like it would make the back half of the race easier. I ran for a little while with a girl and a guy, but eventually passed them. The guy was the same person that beat me in the Prairie Dog runs. I would catch up to him and then he'd sprint ahead of me. I ran the second mile in 7:28.
In the third mile we got off the asphalt road and started running on dirt. This was a little hairy at some points because it was a little loose. Running on sandy dirt is a lot harder than on packed dirt. In this mile I got lost between the fast runners and the slower runners. I felt like I was all alone on a long straightaway of road. Boring. Third mile in 7:37.
We turned around at the 3.1 mile marker. This is where I thought it would get easy because the wind would be toward my back. Boy was I wrong. Without the wind, I got really hot. I couldn't feel the wind blowing against my sweaty skin, so I couldn't feel it cooling me off. I decided that in the summer it is much better to run against the wind. The extra effort might slow you down a little, but probably not as much as the heat will. Fourth mile in 8:01.
Now I started to feel a side stitch. No!!! These things can sideline me. I don't know what causes them or how to avoid them. Sometimes I can run through them, but normally they just get worse. I decided to stop and try to push it out before it got worse. That's why this mile was so slow, 8:32. It seemed to work though because my side didn't bother me for the rest of the race.
The last full mile is where the girl I had passed in the first mile passed me. I tried to keep up with her. After the race she came over to tell me good job. I told her good job as well and that she had pushed me at the very end. "That's what she said," was heard from a group of guys standing behind me. This mile was finished in 8:00.
The last 0.2 mile I really tried to push it to beat the girl. I didn't want to come in fourth for the women. I just remembered back to all my quarter repeats and really tried to dig deep for a last burst of speed. I finished it in 1:23, but I didn't beat her. She ended up beating me by 17 seconds. Why did I have to push out that side stitch??
I finished in 48:12, 26 out of 61 overall, 4th for all the women, and 1st in my age group (out of one). Not too bad. I've also decided that in the training for my next 10K, I'm going to incorporate mile repeats, not just quarter repeats. I think that will help my endurance a lot more. Next time I'll get a sub-45 10K.

The last workouts of my 10K training:
M - 3.74 mi (tempo), 31:04.49
T - 3 mi (easy, but in 97°F heat), 23:41.98
W - 4.25 (1 mi warmup, 6x400 repeats, 1 mi cooldown), repeat times: 88.15, 87.11, 87.26, 93.76, 90.99, 90.75
S - 6.2 (race), 48:12