{"id":2502,"date":"2011-07-02T11:26:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T15:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/?p=2502"},"modified":"2011-07-02T11:26:16","modified_gmt":"2011-07-02T15:26:16","slug":"race-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/02\/race-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Race Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ok, so that was just about as hard as I predicted it to be. \u00c2\u00a0Despite telling myself to just focus on running at a steady pace and to ignore everybody else, I really didn’t do that. \u00c2\u00a0I started at the very back of the pack, hoping that the traffic ahead of me would slow me down and make me run at a reasonable pace. \u00c2\u00a0In fact I was just in front of the Nordic Walking ladies, so I nervously kept some distance in front of them, hopefully out of pole-swinging reach, in case they held any hard feelings for our past run-ins<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0At the starting gun it was awesome, all of those people running at the same time. \u00c2\u00a0Anyway in spite of me telling myself that there was lots of race to run, I loped along at a very very unreasonable pace, passing much smarter people than I everywhere. \u00c2\u00a0I was far too busy running to notice their (probable) knowing smirks at my misplaced enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

Anyway this worked great for the first 4km or so, and then the day got hotter and I got tired. \u00c2\u00a0Really tired. \u00c2\u00a0Then all of these smart people started to trot past me and I felt not so smart. \u00c2\u00a0At around the 7km marker I scoffed that someone was probably in big trouble since they messed up the 9km marker and put a 7 there instead. \u00c2\u00a0And the race still didn’t end, and I had to keep lurching along like some kind of guy who thought he could run a race with hardly any preparation<\/a>, and gallop the first 4km and think he could keep that up for the whole 10. \u00c2\u00a0Yeah, just like that.<\/p>\n

So needless to say it was harder to run that particular 10km than any of the other 10kms I have run in the past. \u00c2\u00a0Yeah. \u00c2\u00a0However I was happy to see my wonderful family waiting for me at the finish line cheering me on, and the last 10km didn’t seem so bad now that it was done. \u00c2\u00a0Several bottles of water and a patch of shade and the real sweating can properly begin (why is it that the sweat seems to be worse after running is over?) and life is very good indeed.<\/p>\n

So, despite messing up in the worst rookie way possible, I did manage to hit my goal of finishing in under an hour: \u00c2\u00a058min, 26sec. \u00c2\u00a0I was pretty surprised to be able to do that actually, considering how very very bad the stretch between say, 5km and 9km was. \u00c2\u00a0The last half let’s say. \u00c2\u00a0Yeah that part.\u00c2\u00a0I’m happy with my time, except that apparently there were 59 guys in my age group that finished ahead of me. \u00c2\u00a0That can’t be right, can it? \u00c2\u00a0Yes, yes it can. \u00c2\u00a0Get off your ass, Vallentyne and actually prepare for the race next time…<\/p>\n

So, there you go. \u00c2\u00a0The first one done, and not the last. \u00c2\u00a0Next time I think maybe I will run with earbuds and some music to help keep me in my own race, and not try to beat everybody in the first 300m. \u00c2\u00a0Yeah, that should be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ok, so that was just about as hard as I predicted it to be. \u00c2\u00a0Despite telling myself to just focus on running at a steady pace and to ignore everybody else, I really didn’t do that. \u00c2\u00a0I started at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[316],"class_list":["post-2502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-running","tag-a-10k-race-at-a-5k-pace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piGNU-Em","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2503,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions\/2503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}