IBM Uptown Classic 10K

The highlight of last week was the IBM Uptown Classic 10K. It is my fall baseline 10K to see how I much I improve over the winter and I did it last year. I've been iffy about my fitness lately so I really didn't have many expectations for this race. So, I'll skip the details because a 10K isn't really that exciting. I did a few tuneups during the week though and carbo loaded a bit.

Started off on the race and I was taking it fairly slow but not too slow. Actually, I was going hard. Well, it is difficult to say but I was pushing it a bit from the beginning. First mile clocked in at about 7:46 which is about what I did last year if I recall correctly. Second mile was about 7:42 and it felt pretty good. I was surprised at the time and how well I was feeling so I decided to push it a bit more. Came in at 7:28 for Mile 3 and then Mile 4 was a nice gradual downhill with a time of 7:12. I was pushing it the last 2 miles, and still feeling good, because I knew that Mile 5 was the hilliest mile on the course and I would go off pace in that mile. Well, that didn't happen. For Mile 5, I averaged 7:39 while climbing about 150 feet. I pushed it up the hills but not to the point of blowing myself up. Also, there were lots of people following the curve of the road and not running tangents. When my Mile 5 split came in and saw that it wasn't 8:20 like it was last year, I got excited. I started thinking that I could beat last year's time so that was more motivation to keep running strong. For the last mile, I knew that half of it was downhill and half was uphill. On the downhill, I was cruising easily at about a 7:00/mile pace. Did I mention that I love the gradual downhills because I can run them well? Turned around to go up the gradual uphill and crossed Mile 6 at 7:14/mile. I was way ahead of last year's time and still feeling great. I kicked it up a gear to finish the last partial mile with a pace of 6:22/mile and a total time of 46:38. This was 1:40 faster than last year and I am very happy with that result. I wasn't expecting to go this fast and I just ran the race that I wanted to race. I was looking at the splits of many others and I actually negative split the 5Ks by about 1:00 while most other people had a positive split of a few seconds to sometimes minutes. I like to ease into the race instead of going out too hard and blowing up early.

Overall, I am very happy with my race and my fitness and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do over the winter.

Weekly run mileage: 12 miles
Asics mileage: 54.5 miles

EDIT: Forgot to post my Garmin data.