Race Report: 2010 Sporting Life 10k

Pre Race

Laura and I picked up our race bibs on Saturday morning and spent a few hours jetting around the city doing some shopping. We took things easy in the afternoon, had a delicious dinner of homemade (although not by us) pasta and then spent the evening watching a movie. On Sunday morning we woke up at 5:45am, ate breakfast and took the TTC to Yonge and Eglington. We walked up past the start line to drop off our bag, did a short warm-up jog and then parted ways at the entrance to our corrals.

The weather reports had been calling for thunderstorms and a 90% POP. It was a warm 18C and humid but mercilessly the rain held off for the most part.

My primary goal for this race was to set a new personal best. That meant running faster than 54:02, my time from my only pervious 10k: the 2006 Dawg Dash. My pie-in-the-sky goal was to go sub 50:00. Just before the race started I decided to throw caution to the wind and try to run 5:00 min/km for as long as I could and see what would happen.

The Race

Despite the fact that the race has a large net downhill (87m or 285ft) there are sill several uphill sections particularly in the first half. I had to do a bit of jockeying for position during the first kilometer but eventually settled into my goal pace. Actually I threw down some ridiculously consistent splits during the first 5k. The were all between 4:55 and 5:03. I hit the 5k in 24:57. I was feeling good but not great at this point and knew I had no room to slow down if I wanted to break 50:00.

During the second half of the race I had to really concentrate on running the kilometer I was in and not worrying about how far it was to the finish. I held things together through the seventh kilometer and then I started to fade. The eighth and ninth kilometers came in at 5:11 and 5:09, respectively. I figured that put me about 20 seconds behind and I’d have to try and make it up in the last kilometer. I turned on the jets with about 750m to go and then really sprinted the last 200m. I knew I had to give it everything I had left because I would be upset if I barely missed making my goal. I hit my watch after crossing the timing mats and felt like I might fall over. When I looked at my watch it read 50:00.21 so I was pretty certain I’d broken 50:00 by chip time. Yippee!

Post Race

I got my medal, some food and drink and then picked up my checked bag. Laura and I met up at our appointed meeting spot and then made the trek up her her condo via TTC. It was sort of cool that even though we kept getting further away from the finish line we kept seeing people on the streets with their medals around their necks.

Data

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                 Cumulative    Cumulative    5Km
Km     Split        Time         Pace       Split
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 1    04:58.5    0:04:58.5     04:58.5
 2    04:58.8    0:09:57.4     04:58.7
 3    05:02.3    0:14:59.7     04:59.9
 4    04:54.5    0:19:54.1     04:58.5
 5    05:02.5    0:24:56.6     04:59.3     24:56.6
 6    04:58.0    0:29:54.6     04:59.1
 7    05:01.1    0:34:55.7     04:59.4
 8    05:11.3    0:40:07.0     05:00.9
 9    05:09.4    0:45:16.3     05:01.8
10    04:39.8    0:49:56.1     04:59.6     24:59.5
      49:56.1
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Overall place:  2670/11913 (77th percentile)
Gender place:   648/6684   (90th percentile)
Division place: 138/1221   (88th percentile)