Another year, another Cap10K.  As my fourth time running this race, I wanted to set a new PR (currently 39:45).  I had big hopes of following a brutal training plan full of speedwork, tempo runs, and general self-torture.  It’s all about pain management after all.  And everything was going to plan, except that I didn’t do any actual training.  At all.  Sure, I ran; just nothing you could call “training”.  So would I set a new PR?  Did I overcome the deck that I had stacked against myself?  What are lofty goals for if not dramatic cliffhangers in a blog post?

The forecast promised rain, and at 6am when my alarm went off, it was coming down pretty hard.  Luckily by the time I was in my car heading down to the race, we were left with pleasantly cool, mercifully not-humid, pretty ideal race conditions.  I parked and walked over to the starting area while keeping my eyes peeled for any familiar faces.  In the starting corral I met up with a few fellow coworkers, most of whom would finish well ahead of me.

I bounced up and down, shook out my legs, and without much fanfare we were off!  The course hasn’t changed, which means it’s still hilly as all get-out for the first half, before settling into a relatively flat finish.  I hoped to start somewhat easy on the early hills to save some juice for the end.  What I didn’t remember was that “easy” still meant “painful.”

Things went as planned, except that when the going got tough, my body didn’t have months of training setting the foundation.  Instead when I dug deep I found a voice saying “You did this to yourself.  Keep going!”  So I ran.  Around Mile Marker 5 I really wanted to stop.  Like, just pull over and sit down.  It took some mind-over-matter convincing to push harder.

All that said, the bit of redemption is seeing the absolutely CRUSHED look on this guy’s face as we approached the finish and I passed him.  Sorry, bro.

The joke might be on me though.  After looking up the two people in these pictures I learned that the guy above is 53 years old and the kid below is 14.  Whatever.  I still crushed them and look happy doing it.  I crossed the line in 40:33, about 49 seconds slower than I wanted in order to set a new PR.

The big takeaway: you gotta train!  49 seconds may not sound like a big deal, but over only 6.2 miles, it is.  No doubt I could’ve gotten my time down with some extra work.  There’s always next year!  Though at that point I may have a stroller to contend with.

And for the TENTH year in a row, my company’s team won the “Corporate Challenge”!  Our five fastest runners had the quickest combined time.  For the record, I came in 9th on our team, out of the 119 official company team registrants.  We fast.