Race Report: Race to the End of Summer 10K 2018

And #fallspeedfest2018 is off and running!

Race to the End of Summer was my first race since Big Sur Marathon over 4 months ago and it felt good to pin on a bib. I'd run this race twice before, in both 2016 and 2017; it's a solid local event, small and low-key but well organized, so it had been on my calendar since last year. I ran it in 2016 as my first tune up for CIM & shocked myself by running just 17 seconds off my PR & snagging 2nd overall & 1st in my age group (it's a small race) after just a few weeks of training (mostly lots of easy jogging) & only three speed workouts. Then last year (during the Bay Area's record-setting heatwave, after two days of moving & a night of basically no sleep) I completely fell apart & ran by far the worst 10K of my life. Clearly I had unfinished business with this race!

This year, as in 2016, I was only a few weeks back into running, almost all slow easy miles, & just three workouts (& oh yeah those eight weeks I took completely off from running after Boston 2 Big Sur). In a way, this took some of the pressure off--this was just my first race of an 18 week #fallspeedfest season, so all I really wanted to do was go in as fresh as possible, run hard, and not wimp out in order to get a baseline for the rest of the fall.

But, you know how brains are. I'd been haunted by the specter of last year's disaster of a death march, and no matter how much I tried to focus on all the less-than-ideal factors that were in play that day, part of my mind kept whispering, "It could happen again, you know. You're not that fit and maybe you won't sleep again or you'll have completely forgotten how to suffer in a short race. Remember how hard those HM pace mile repeats were last week? Just wait for it!"

On the other hand, I'd had a couple of really encouraging speed workouts, so I tried to focus on those. I made it a point to get some extra sleep the week before, and I've also been trying to start using mantras for races. For this one I decided to go with "relaxed, focused, & in control" (ie not panicking, even if things start to go badly, but also staying engaged & keeping the foot on the accelerator no matter how painful it is). Which is all good, because it turns out I didn't really sleep much the night before, boooo sad face (no idea why).

I arrived at Hellyer Park around 6:45pm (the staging site was changed this year and I only found out about it when I read the "Final Instructions" email); it wasn't too long before I ran into Sesa, Jen & BT (THANKS AGAIN BT FOR PICKING UP BIBS!).

We watched the half marathon start around 7:20, and then I headed off for a little warm up. Because of the course change I wasn't familiar with this one, and I noticed that the first mile had several short-but-somewhat steep rollers in it, a little different than the old course's nearly pancake-flat profile. It wasn't crazy, though, so I wasn't too worried. I tried to ignore how my legs felt a bit heavy & my heart rate seemed weirdly high. It's just the caffein! I told myself.

DOUBLE SHOT CAPPUCCINO AFTER TWO-WEEK CAFFEINE FAST YEEEESSSSSS

A few minutes before eight we lined up for the 5K & 10k start, took a quick pre-race selfie, the horn sounded, and we were off.

Pre-race selfie

The start was crowded and involved taking kind of a sharp turn up a steepish (but thankfully short) hill out of the park and onto the road. I had a little trouble setting in and finding space to run but since I was not trying to go out too fast & destroy myself it all worked out. I didn't really have a pacing plan other than "start off somewhere between 7:00 & 7:30, see how it feels, & go from there." At first I was discouraged to see 7:40-7:50ish on my watch, but I was able to pick it up & soon enough started seeing paces closer to 7:10-7:20. Since my PR 10K pace (which I did NOT expect to match today) was 7:09, I tried to keep it right there & see how it felt to hold that pace for a mile or so.

Since I've always finished close to the top of the women's field in this race, I wanted to at least try to hold onto any lead pack of women that formed & see how it felt. There were several women running around me, but since the 5K & 10K had started together, I knew that some of them would be turning around at 1.55 miles & I wanted to sit tight until then & see how things shook out. Sure enough all but one in a pink top turned around for the 5K & I decided to do my best to hang with her.

Racing: Not as serious as it sounds sometimes!

Somewhere in mile 2 I started to pull ahead and she started to fall back, and after that it was me and a very tall man in a neon yellow shirt. The pace he was running pushed me without seeming unsustainable, so after that I stuck with him.

Mile 1: 7:19
Mile 2: 7:17

Around mile 2 is where the old familiar "Wow this sucks and there is NO WAY I can sustain this pace for four more miles" feeling started to set it in. It's usually a liar, though, and even if it happened to be right this time, I decided I wanted to try to stick with this 7:10-20 pace for as long as I could and if I blew up before the end of the race, that was information.

Historically mile 4 has been my toughest mile in the 10K; you've been running hard for a good while now but there's still a significant fraction left to go and the pace starts to feel daunting when you think of how much time is left. This time, though, mile 3 was the toughest. I was tired and it was hard and I wasn't even half way and found myself slowing a bit, and I honestly think that if I hadn't had the neon yellow man pushing the pace I probably would have slowed down even more.

Mile 3: 7:24

Something happened when we hit the turn around though. Usually this is where the "Uuuuugghhhh this hurts SO BAD and we are SO FAR from the finish line" thoughts start to appear, but for whatever reason the first thing my mind latched on to was "Get through the .1 back, then we're into mile 4 which means LESS THAN THREE MILES LEFT which means less than a mile, then just two miles to go." Maybe it's all the marathons I've run this year but suddenly running "less than a mile" and "just two more miles" felt completely doable. I remember passing the Mile 10 marker for the half and thinking, "Hey, it's like I'm at mile 10 of a half! Or mile 23 of a marathon! SO CLOSE!" I wouldn't have thought it but this mental tactic really did work. I don't know where exactly but I think somewhere around mile 4-4.5 I pulled ahead of the neon man & lost him for good.

Mile 4: 7:18

With just two miles left to go I kept thinking, "Two miles. Nothing. Throw it all on the fire. You can sprint for two miles." (Not really.) Things felt appropriately hard at that point--I was in serious discomfort and working super hard but at the same time I was mentally relaxed and in control (GO GO GADGET MANTRAS). The pace felt hard but sustainable, and I just kept counting down from 100 with every quarter mile, kind of startled to look at my watch and occasionally see that I was running 7:05 or even 6:55 pace at times.

Mile 5: 7:12

And then, wow! Out of nowhere, who should it be but Pink Top woman from mile 2, who I never in a million years would I have thought was coming back. But there she was, cruising right by me with a "Good job!"

Ahhhhh there she comes!!! The photographer should have warned me.

I had not heard her coming and for the only time in the race started to panic a little, thinking I should have done a better job watching for her after the turn around. For a while I stuck with her; at some point a volunteer on a bike cruised past and called "Good job, race for first woman!"

What I can say is that I really, truly floored it at that point, thinking maybe I could pull out a win and wouldn't that be nifty. I shoved the pedal to the medal but apparently what I had going at that point was what I had, and I had zero luck chasing her as she gradually began to pull away.

Mile 6: 7:15

In the first three miles my watch had buzzed right with the markers, but it was a bit early for 4 and 5, so I started mentally preparing myself to clock a bit over 6.2. I was running as hard as I could at that moment, the legs starting to feel a bit like jello as I counted down, "Three laps left. Two laps left, you can totally sprint that. Just one lap left and one more and then a bit."

Only that's not what happened. My watch hit 6.2 and I still couldn't see the finish line. Around 6.3 it came into view, and I hurled myself back down the small steep hill from the beginning and sprinted towards the finish line for all I was worth, crossing with 6.37 on my watch and not quite ready to collapse but close.

Photo credit = BT

Last .37: 2:43 (7:10 pace)

After grabbing my medal and a bottle of water which I half guzzled and half doused over my head, I found my friends and told them with a half grimace, "6.37." Ah well, I had no problem taking the pace from my watch and doing the math to find out the equivalent time for a proper 10K. But then, I ran into the neon yellow shirt man, and after exchanging thank you's for pushing each other to keep up an honest pace during that part of the race when there had been no one else around us, he said, "I was pretty close behind you and I think you went the wrong way. Did you go to the right?"

The statement made so sense to me because I'd just followed what seemed like the obvious path, the one the other runners in front of me were taking, but he shook his head. "Yeah, the course was to the left. I think you went the long way through the parking lot. You probably added an extra, like, two tenths of a mile."

Sure enough, a quick check of my Strava data confirmed this.

Oops indeed. :-/

Checking in with a few other 10K folks confirmed that others had mostly gotten right around 6.2. Obviously things were happening pretty quickly at that point in the race but I don't remember the course being marked at that split, and I just followed the people I could see in front of me (5K runners, I assume) like you do in a race. But who knows, I don't actually remember. All I know is that I ran an extra ~.17 miles which cost me about 65 seconds.

Official: 46:27 / 6.2 miles / 7:30 pace

Garmin: 46:30 / 6.37 miles / 7:18 pace

I don't normally take "off" Garmin course measurements and extrapolate them to exact course measurements, because that's not how racing works and unless there is an actual course error, you ran the tangents you ran & had the GPS error you had. But in this case, since I knew I went significantly off the course & legitimately ran a good bit farther than most people, I did, because I wanted to know what that 6.2 time might have been otherwise. So:

Hypothetical-theoretical-extrapolated-actual-10K: 7:18 pace / 6.2 miles / ~45:22

You can @ me about this if you want, but the fact is I ran this race for information and I think this is a reasonable way to get it under the circumstances. I'm not arguing I absolutely-definitely-100% would have run this time if not for my little side trip, but it IS good information for me. What I know is that I maintained 7:18 pace over nearly 6.4 miles (up to GPS error) which was not not NOT a thing I thought I could do going into this race, and THAT is a big deal.

Ultimately even my official going-off-the-course time netted me 2nd overall and 2nd in my age group. I walked away with a podium medal & a $35 gift card to Sports Basement, which, since I received a comped race entry for getting at least 10 other people to sign up, I actually MADE money on this race! #achievementunlocked (Er, maybe not after gas money, though...)

So, yeah. Bummer about the wrong turn, but I feel like I got out of this race the information about my fitness that I was after. About a minute off PR shape (maybe less if you consider that this was a slightly rolling course & a slightly warm day) and certainly far from the worst 10K I've ever run. Not a miraculous result, but a stunning and solid one given my extremely limited training thus far, and definitely something I can proudly shoot to build on for the rest of the fall. (Though, I may not run another 10K until February. We'll see.) Also it's SUCH a relief to get out from under the specter of last year's catastrophically disappointing race and have this one to point to instead!

Sweaty post-race running friends. Don't ask me what's up with the facial expression, I swear I was happy!

So, yeah. What can I say, except don't get too down on yourself when things haven't gone your way in a while. Show up, give it what you've got, and every now & then you may surprise yourself.

As a wise woman once said, #keepshowingup

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~LOGISTICAL STUFF~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Location: San Jose, CA

Date: Early September (Sunday, Sept 2, 2018 this year)

Price: In the modern world of race fees, I count this one as pretty darn reasonable if you get in early. From the website:

As a race ambassador I also received a coupon code for $7 off to share with as many people as wanted to use it, and (full disclosure) when 10 people had used it I received a comped entry.

Deadlines/sellout factor: I know all distances sold out last year but I'm not sure about this year.

Field Size: Finishers:

• Half Marathon - 138 finishers
• 10K - 112 finishers
• 5K - 104 finishers

Staging:

This year the staging site was changed from where it's been for the last two years (at least) on Embedded Way between NexTest & the Silver Creek Sports Complex & instead the start/finish was set up actually IN Coyote Creek Park. As in previous years, staging consisted of the start/finish line, a few of sponsor/results/etc. tents, & a few port-a-potties (which seemed like plenty).

Parking at Coyote Creek Park was a little more involved than at Embedded way. Options were to pay to park in the park itself ($6), about a five minute walk from the staging area, or in free overflow parking, a 10-15 minute walk. People were encouraged to carpool as parking was not quite as abundant as in the old staging location. I was a little worried about having to wait in a parking line since the half started at 7, but when I drove up at 6:40 I only had to wait maybe 10 minutes to pay at the kiosk, and there was still *plenty* of parking there.

No gear check but parking is close enough and the weather is pleasant enough this time of year that that was fine. (As per usual I just dropped my bag behind one of the sponsor tents & figured no one would bother it, which they didn't.)

One change I was pleased about this year was the addition of race day bib & shirt pickup. As someone who lives a good 50 miles away, I *really* appreciate this. BT agreed to pick up bibs for us anyway since she lives nearby (and we missed the part about race day pickup until after that), but if I didn't have a friend that lived nearby, and there was no race day pickup, and I wasn't going to be down in the area on the pickup day anyway (as I randomly happened to be in 2016), that would probably be a deal breaker for me unless there was some packet mailing option.

The Course:

Although the staging site changed this year, the courses used a lot of the same parts of Coyote Creek Trail, just in reverse, though there was not complete overlap. The beginning of this year's 10K course included more little rollers, which were not part of the previous two years' 10K course. (NBD, just saying.) All three courses began in Coyote Creek Park, headed down the CC Trail, then turned around & headed back.

I have to say I have a slight preference for the previous course because I think it was a little flatter, but I still think this one was very reasonable (at least the 5K/10K courses, which is all I can speak to). CC is a nice little pedestrian/bike trail to run on, maybe half shaded and half exposed. It was not closed to other pedestrians but that was not an issue at all in my experience. I only encountered a few non-racers and this race is small enough that there was still plenty of room for runners on both sides of the out-and-back.

The shorter courses covered the appropriate first part of the HM course, then headed back the same way they came. Y'know. Unless you're me. :P

Swag:

You know, tech T-shirts as race swag kind of had a moment in the last 10 years or so, but to be honest I am over it and I'm kind of more interested in a nice, high-quality, well-fitted cotton logo T like we received this year. Tech T's are fine but at a certain point you have a million of them and to be honest I have always been more of a tank top girl so when it comes to race tech T's I pretty much rotate through the same maybe three, when I wear them at all. (And this year, all the ones I hadn't worn in over a year went into textile recycling because a girl needs to reclaim some drawer space.)

Another very nice medal as in previous years, AND new for this year (I think? Or maybe I just missed it last year?) age group medals! 1st, 2nd, & 3rd overall men and women in each distance also received a Sports Basement gift certificate. (Yayyyyyy stuff you can uuuuuuseeee!!!)

If you decide to run:

It's San Jose in the summer, so you are at the mercy of the weather. I can't stress this enough. This year it was a pleasant ~61F & partly sunny with a slight breeze at the start; last year it was 80F & super humid by 7am. The races start early enough & there's enough shade on Coyote Creek Trail that it might be totally comfortable, but there is always the potential for a warmish race.

Overall Assessment:

I stick by my previous assessment: A solid, small local option for all three distances with a good course (though this year's was slightly more rolling as I said). It has always been well organized, the price is right, and although it's a *bit* of a drive for me, it's close enough (and the logistics are easy enough) that I don't mind making it the morning of at all.