No Ego Food for Me!

Today I ran my 4th Bolder Boulder 10K race. I apparently was not as recovered from my sinus infection as I thought and ran a disappointing 58:16.

The bright spot of the race was that I beat my 5K split time from my Colfax Marathon Relay last Sunday. This is especially great because Colfax was downhill and this was uphill.

For those who don't know the race, the terrain goes like this:

Mile 1--starts downhill for nearly the whole mile. It is hard to not start too fast.

Mile 2--a gradual uphill that you still feel okay about because you are still kind of fresh

Mile 3--a steeper uphill where you are really not liking the race

Mile 4--rolling hills up to the highest point of the race

Mile 5--downhill nearly the whole mile

Mile 6--starts to go uphill again, you have a sharp uphill to go into the stadium.

So by mile 3 I started seeing my PR running away from me. It was cool and I expected to feel better than last year because of that.

The Memorial Day tribute was well done.

The elite race was fun to watch. I was disapointed that neither Deena Kastor nor Ryan Hall won their races. I would guess this wasn't a goal race for them.

Pre-Race Jitters

Tomorrow is my 4th Bolder Boulder. Each year I have done this race I have had a huge ego-feeding PR. Tomorrow I'm not so sure. Maybe my ego doesn't need any more food?

My first BB was 1:27 (I was severely anemic and walked a lot of it). My next BB was 1:07 and I ran every step of it! Last year was 54:51.

One of my stated goals for my running is that I want to do a sub-50 10K while I still am sub-50 years old. A 50 minute 10K is about an 8:17 pace. This year this goal is most likely out of my reach. I just hope I can chip away some time this year and pull out a PR.

I've been obsessively watching the weather report for tomorrow. Every time I look it is getting just a bit worse. Last year was hot, so cooler will be nice. Rain and wind may come into the picture here--those won't be fun.

I'm worried that I don't have the drive I need to keep running hard when running hard just stinks. I try to think of the pros when I start to feel this. I'm not sure if it's true, but I tell myself that it's hard for them too--that they have to run at the same effort--that this brings us together as runners, even though we aren't running anything close to the same pace.

Deena Kastor is one of the elite runners who will be running the professional race. I'll have to say that I am definitely a fan! I think she is inspiring and I am really looking forward to seeing her run. The elites will run the same course as we will for the first time since 1979. As an added bonus, I will get to see my mile splits in comparison with hers. This both interests and terrifies me.

I find it interesting since I will get to see if Deena's pace will slow when she goes up the hill on mile 4 or if it will just stay the same because she is an awesome and strong runner.

Of course it's terrifying because I will see that Deena probably runs twice as fast as I do. I see how she runs and how others I admire (my coaches) run and wonder if I am running to my full potential.

No matter how well I do, I always like to think that maybe I could do better next time.

Long Dry Spell

I've talked about my injuries before. After the DisneyWorld Marathon in January, my ITB pain was so bad I basically couldn't run for almost 2 months. I had to drop from the half to the 5 Mile run at Canyonlands. I was really upset. I loved running Canyonlands last year and was looking forward to running it again.

It's strange how I thought that I was somehow only supposed to share my successes on my blog--my wonderful mile--the next PR... and that if I said I was hurt and and angry about it, that was somehow less noble.

I still don't know if I am running as well as I was last year. The bad thing is that I don't know if I'm okay with that. I guess I have to be.