Back in October I received a free entry to the 12Ks of Christmas for volunteering at the Dawg Dash. I sent in the entry and decided that I’d make running the race a game time decision dependent on my recovery from the Fall Classic half marathon and the day’s weather. The recovery was no problem and it wasn’t raining on Sunday morning so I decided to go for it.

I didn’t really check out the route beforehand but if there’s one thing I remember from running the Kirkland Half Marathon in May it’s that Kirkland is hilly. I made up a little song to psych myself up about it: When I say Kirkland you say Hills: Kirkland!Hills! Kirkland! Hills! That worked for the first kilometer.

I had no real goals for this race. I hadn’t specifically trained for this distance although I had kept my mileage up since the half four weeks ago. I figured going under an hour would be pretty cool but might be slightly out of my reach. I decided to try and pace 5:00 kilometers anyway because I like nice round numbers.

My splits were consistently inconsistent: if the kilometer was predominately uphill the split was slower than 5:00, if it was predominately downhill the split was faster than 5:00. Along the way I achieved and unofficial 10K PB of 51:00. I’ve only ever run one 10K race and it wasn’t an “A” race (see: Race Report: Dawg Dash 10K 2006) so my official 10K PB of 54:02 is a bit out of synch with the rest of my PBs. I finished the 12K in 1:00:48. If the course hadn’t been as hilly I might have been able to break and hour but that’s just speculation. I’m still really happy with my result and thrilled that I finished in the 90th percentile for my age group!

I’m done with speed for a while. My plan is now to move into base training mode. That means trying to build my aerobic base by doing lots of slow running and cross training. The next race on my calendar is the Vancouver Half Marathon in May.

Data

 km    Split  Cumulative Avg BPM Elevation
=============================================
  1   5:22.9   0:05:22.9   159   uphill
  2   4:54.4   0:10:17.3   170   downhill
  3   4:45.7   0:15:03.0   178   downhill
  4   5:24.1   0:20:27.1   186   uphill
  5   5:13.0   0:25:40.1   186   uphill
  6   5:13.3   0:30:53.4   186   uphill
  7   5:33.1   0:36:26.5   184   mixed
  8   4:43.2   0:41:09.7   182   downhill
  9   4:47.2   0:45:46.9   183   downhill
 10   5:03.0   0:50:59.9   186   mixed
 11   5:03.8   0:56:03.7   184   mixed
 12   4:44.5   1:00:48.2   185   mixed
=============================================
Total 1:00:48
Avg pace 5:04 min/km     Avg BPM 180
Place overall 203/937 (78th percentile)
Place in gender 75/587 (87th percentile)
Plane in age group (F2529) 16/156 (90th percentile)