Iron Girl 10K Race Report (update)

I realized that in my whiny post from the other day I never really gave a good race report. So here goes:

Official results updated on the Iron Girl website:

Rank-- 268/998
Division Place-- 39/141
Time--59:14
Pace--9:33

It doesn't reflect a sub-nine pace, but I will take it. I will still put a little asterisk by it for my PR since I am convinced that my Nike+ was pretty close to being accurate (it always has been). My rankings make me happy, since I am well into the top half of the pack. If I had to run a longer course, so did everyone else.

Jen and I arrived at the Del Mar fairgrounds around 6:40 a.m. It was nice to be able to park for free. The only other time I have been there is for the fair and you have to pay. Since it was hours before the fair opens. It was clear and sunny-- not your typical June morning in Del Mar. Usually, there is a nice marine layer in the morning that keeps things cool. Not that day. Oh well....

We had to get tickets to get into the fairgrounds. Luckily, they were handing out two tickets to each person. Then we walked through the fairgrounds to the horsetrack. We checked in, got our numbers and chips and headed through the expo to pick up our goodie bag. We went back to the car with our bags. It was quite a ways, so we got our warm up that way.

We ran into former Stroller Strider, Alicia. It was great to see her! She ran in last year's Iron Girl, too. We met some other Stroller Striders from Riverside (we saw one of their SS shirts and started talking to them). It is like we all have a little club. These women had come down from Riverside and one of them, used to teach a bit at our location and we recognized each other. Races like this are fun reunions!

Being at the racetrack was pretty neat. It is a beautful track. There is a beautiful mega-screen that showed the crowd. As the gun went off, we could actually see the runners begin. As I mentioned in my last post, we were way in the back. It was neat to see the crowd moving forward (there were over 3000 women running that day).

The first and last half mile of so was on the actual horse racing track. It looked like dirt, but when we got on it, it was more spongy than dirt. Come to find out, Del Mar has polytrack, which is a synthetic track that is safer for horses. At first Jen and I were both thinking, this is pretty cool. It is nice and soft before hitting the Pacific Highway. However, as I tried to get into my stride, it started to feel more like running on packed sand--not exactly the greatest for good speed. In fact, on the home stretch coming toward the finish line, I got that feeling like in a dream. You know the dream where you are trying to run fast but your legs won't let you??? That's how I felt, especially at the end.

Immediately upon leaving the squishy track, we get on a pretty steep hill going out of the fairgrounds. The course turned towards Pacific Coast Highway and then down toward Solana Beach. It is nice to run a race and be able to see the Pacific Ocean. I love living here!

Man, it was HOT. I hadn't thought I would need to get water; I run 6 miles all the time without water. However, I got water at every stop and drank both Gatorade and water at the halfway point. Around four miles or so, I actually started feeling a bit dizzy. I had just pushed up a pretty big hill. I had thought about turning it on so I could catch up with Jen, but then thought better of it. I ate a couple of jelly beans to give me some extra calories and then drank a good amount of water at the last water stop.

On a funny note... at around 4 miles, when I was feeling the worst, I saw a woman with the craziest running form. She was moving her elbows way out to the side. She looked like she was dancing. At first, I actually thought she was. I thought to myself, "wow, that is wasting SO much energy." But, yet... she was ahead of me. She was very tall and obviously in great shape. She could run like that AND run fast. I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't catch up with her, thinking that my form is more efficient (but maybe I am not as efficient as I thought...). I felt pretty good when I finally passed her on the track. Just think how well she would do if she stopped moving her arms so much.

When I ran the 10K last summer, I had a pretty fast kick at the end. I also recovered very quickly. I knew that I could have pushed it harder in the middle miles. It was my very first race and I had no clue about pacing. This year when I hit that last mile, I was giving it everything I had. I didn't kick as fast as I had in the past. As a matter of fact, as I got on that squishy track I forgot how long it was. I was getting discouraged. I saw women stopping and walking all around me. I was hurting and that actually looked good to me. I mentally slapped myself and said, "you ran a MARATHON, for crying out loud, you can run another HALF MILE to the finish line!!!" I pushed myself and sprinted to the end. I felt good because I knew that I didn't leave anything out there. I don't think I could have done much better given the heat etc.

So that is my full report. As always... a bit wordy. If you got through it all, I thank you. :-)