heart of summer 10k 41m:13s

i went up to minnesota for my 20th high school class reunion. i intended to get some running miles while i was there, but had not intended to do any racing. a couple weeks before the reunion weekend my good friend and classmate mike mcmahan invited me to join him for a 10k around lake nokomis and even offered to cover the registration fee - i can't reject an offer like that!

coming into this event, to share that i was a little behind on rest would be a major understatement. i flew to minnesota early friday morning after about 3 hours of sleep. friday night we visited with classmates until after midnight and thus i grabbed only about 4 hours of sleep in the morning hours of race day. i encouraged myself by being thankful it wasn't a marathon or ultra i would be running.

race morning steve and i got over to the event location with plenty of time to spare. steve got some miles in and i rested in his vehicle. then mike showed up and unintentionally parked right next to us. we enjoyed some visiting time and then mike and i did about a mile warm-up. i snuck off to do some striders and to duck into the bushes to lighten the fluid load. when i got back i found mike and we conversed about running the first couple of miles together. both of us were approaching this as a tempo run as part of our marathon conditioning.


mike and i got off to a pretty smooth start. i opted to not wear my garmin. i wanted to run with my heart and not be overly concerned about splits. we took the first mile out pretty smooth and i did check the first mile split because that is often very helpful information.

after two miles mike encouraged me to go on without him. i was feeling really smooth, but also attempting to hold back a bit for the second 5k.
just after the 5k split i did pick up the pace a little bit.

after 4 miles, i started to feel a loss of oxygen efficiency. the run shifted into hold on mode and there wasn't much picking up the pace for the rest of the distance.

i was thankful to be coming into the finish. i don't often run with my heart-rate up there - most of my miles are of the long-slow-distance-pace status. but i was also pleased that i still can run some fairly efficient miles and i think this kind of miles will help me with some of my dreams of running faster marathons in the future.

after the event we enjoyed some more visiting time and some great snacks.

my average pace for the event was 6:38. i was pleased with that.

a big thank you to mike for the invitation and covering my registration. and a big thank you to steve for the transportation, support, and photos.