2018 Rite Aid Cleveland 10K - Race Report

Day 49/55

Oh how I love writing race reports! They might be boring for you to read, but it means that I'm healthy enough to be out there running and that never gets old.

Last year the Hot Chocolate 15K was the first "big" race my mom ever participated in. Although she doesn't think she'll ever do that distance again, she was willing to try her hand at a 10K. I have done the Cleveland HALF Marathon 3 times ('11, '12, '17), and since I'm back to running I'd like to keep participating in the event in some capacity. I decided that rather than pushing myself back to the half marathon distance I would do the 10K this year. I remember deciding in 2012 that I really liked the 10K distance. It's long enough to still challenge yourself without being so long you feel like you're going to die at the end. Don't get me wrong though, there will be more half's and hopefully at least one more full in my lifetime!

Getting cold and wet waiting for the start. 

My mom and I decided it would be best to go to the race together so she wouldn't have to navigate downtown on race morning by herself. Not that she couldn't do it or anything, but I know she tends to get stressed about that stuff. 😉I went to her house on Saturday evening to spend the night so we could go to the race together on Sunday morning. It was nice spending a child-less evening with my parents. We stayed up entirely too late watching the majority of the Cavs game.

This morning came quickly and before I knew it I was back downtown to start another race. As we were driving into the city it started misting, which turned into convincing raindrops by the time we parked the car. So much for partly cloudy and no rain! We thought we were going to be able to stay dry until the start of the race because last year they let us into the Q arena prior to the race. That did not appear to be the case this year and we were already quite wet from walking to the start from our parking spot anyway. So we just stood in the rain for the next 15+ minutes waiting for the start of the race.

This race felt more crowded than last year. I was surprised at how long the 10Ker's stayed with the half and full marathoners. We were on the same course until right around mile 5 and then we hooked back up with them before mile 6. It was kind of strange, but kind of cool at the same time. When the 10K went straight and everyone else turned left I thought we'd be on our own until basically the last .2 or so (since everyone finishes in the same place). Pretty soon after we broke off, our course took us on a right turn and all of the sudden we had hooked back up with the very speedy half and full marathoners. The mile marker I saw for them at this point was mile 9....and we were at less than 6. In some ways I didn't think this was a great way to do the course because you have the very fast runners meeting up with the middle to the back of the packers for the 10K. It seemed to be OK though since at this point the faster runners could stay over to the left.

Anyway, I was shocked at how crowded the race stayed. It's hard to tell in this picture because it was so dreary, but this was during mile 4 and it was still quite crowded.

I felt good during this entire race. It almost felt easy - until that horribly annoying hill between miles 4 and 5 (just like last year). That slowed me down quite a bit, but I was able to bounce back to my faster pace when that hill was finally done. I have been doing 90 second/30 second intervals and I was able to keep my intervals the entire time. Actually, there were even a couple of times that we ran through our walk breaks because it was a nice downhill and we wanted to take advantage.

Again, you have the difference between what my Garmin says I did and what the official results show. According to my Garmin I covered 6.37 miles in 1:16:11, which amounts to an overall pace of 11:57 minute/mile!!! The official results were 6.2 miles in 1:15:56, which is a 12:15 m/m and officially beats my previous personal record of 1:17:51! And the best part? I really feel like I could have kept going.

And now 6 more days to work on my goals before our awesome vacation!

And this is what happens to my hair after 6.2 wet miles!