Day 70 Race Day: Rhodes 10K. I was already in Louisville with my daughter so, I was ready to go. I got up at about 5:30 and knocked out about 40 minutes of running. I didn’t map it, but I figure it was around 4 miles. I thought I would try and make-up for missing my long run this week.
The guys picked me up at around 7:30 and we were off to downtown Louisville. I had not run in a competative race since high school. I am not sure that you can call it a competative race when you don’t really care about the outcome, but at least it was a race atmosphere. One other difference, races in high school had no more than 10 competators. This was over 5,000 runners in addition to walkers.
I would mention that it was a bit cold due to a constant breeze and threatening rain, but that would not be much of an issue once we got moving and nothing in comparison to last weeks little jaunt in the snow.
My goal was to set my normal little 10:30 min/mile pace, run my 6.2 miles and head back to the hotel. Simple, right? Not so simple when you are elbow to elbow with thousands of other runners of various sizes, shapes, strides, and paces. You have to get out of the crowd which means work yourself through the crowd and out into the open. Of course, once in the open, pace should not be an issue. Well, maybe it is not that simple. Dodging people and moving into the open is a contant issue through out the race. I felt pretty good so I just grabbed a compfortable pace and pushed on. I caught one of my mates and we just talked, dodged, and ran for the rest of the race. With the exception of the horrific breathing difficulties around the Lousiville Stockyards, the race was actually, pretty easy. In the end, we ran an 8:41 min/mile pace. Better than anything I have run since beginning this training.
It is good to know that maybe I can run even when I am out on the “Floodplain of the Jordan” Ok, it is the Ohio, but I like to try an make a tie-in to previous posts.