Ridgewood 10k on May 25, 2009

For the first time in 2009, I turned my attention to some more competitive running--this time in the form of a 10 kilometer race rather than the 5k races already under my belt this calendar year.

I was introduced to an established run in Ridgewood, NJ by a co-worker, and thought I'd try it out. I drove to Ridgewood the week before and tried to navigate the course via car and from a map found online. Basically the run was flat--it was just a matter of trying to eyeball some landmarks and get a feel for mile markers.

On race day, I was met with humidity--not my ally for races. Despite that, there was job to do. I also had it in my head that since my best competitive 10k was clocked at a rather unimpressive 1:13:00 and my weight loss since my last 10k was considerable (almost 15 lbs), I would likely surpass that time, the question being by how much. Frankly, given the sticky weather in the morning and how humidity plays on my endurance, I thought even a three minute improvement (1:10:00) might still be worth celebrating.

There were over 1,300 runners booked for this race--quite a lot! For the first 3 miles of the run I had a pace going that was easily on track for not only crushing the 1:13:00 time from last year, but my target of 1:10:00. As the race wore on I started to feel the signs of fatigue with the heat increasing and could feel my pace weakening. However, unlike my previous 10k races where I found myself ultimately resorting to the occasional walking, I refused to let that happen, no matter how slow I became. In the end, I approached the finish line elated to have a gun time of 1:08:04. For those of you curious by the term, 'gun time' refers to the total time of race including the time I was working my way up to the starting line before I could actually start the race. I learned a few days later my 'chip time' (the time I actually spent running) was 1:07:15, way better than I thought I'd do! Well, I have the Montclair 10k in a couple of weeks, so we'll see if this record will have some legs and will hold on, or if I'm going to be reporting on yet another record at that time!