.: Race Report: SacTown 10 Miles 2022 (+ USATF Masters 10 Mile National Champs!)

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Race Report: SacTown 10 Miles 2022 (+ USATF Masters 10 Mile National Champs!)

Why did I sign up to run this race?

Originally I had been thinking I would stick to PA short course races for the spring as I was getting back into the swing of things, but then I actually really enjoyed Kaiser Half in February and started to feel like, hey, maybe the long stuff could be fun too?? My "official" 10 mile PR was an incredibly soft 1:20:xx (about 8:00-8:05 pace) from one time that I'd run a 10 mile race as a marathon pace workout, so I thought odds were good I could probably better that a bit.

Later I found out that, not only was SacTown a PA race this year, it would also be the USATF 10 Mile Masters Championship race. There were three other 40-44 ladies on the team planning to run, so I really just couldn't pass up the experience.

And then what happened?

Then I ran my fastest half marathon in nine years at Oakland on March 20! Including a 10-mile split of 1:16:44 (~7:40 pace), utterly demolishing my old PR. Coach A asked me if I had any goals for SacTown and I kind of just arbitrarily said let's shoot for 1:15 (7:30 pace)??? I didn't feel like I'd run all-out at the half marathon so it seemed like it wasn't completely unreasonable.

Since this race was a USATF championship race, there was all kinds of fancy to-do around it. We all had to submit proof of citizenship & DOB to USATF for approval and also register for drug testing & submit TUEs for any medications on the conditional or banned list. (I had only one but it was fine, and none of us got drug tested.)

There was a technical meeting Thursday evening where USATF folks went over uniform rules, course rules, and all the race day logistics. One cool part was that masters championship runners got access to the same area as the elite runners, with chairs, shade, food, water, and most importantly, a private bank of port-a-potties. There was no bag check for the open race since there was so much super close free street parking, so it was nice that they had a guarded area in the tent where we could leave stuff since the morning was chilly and my car was like 0.8 miles away at the hotel.

On the tragic side of things, the day got off to a rough start for the Sacramento community with a mass shooting around 2am at a nightclub about halfway between the venue (near the Capitol Mall) and the race hotel (where I was staying). Six people died at the scene with twelve others wounded to varying extents. I saw the police cars and tape up just a few blocks from the hotel on my shakeout run early that morning, and not long after got a notification on my phone. To be honest I was a little surprised that the race wasn't canceled or postponed, but then again it seems like as a country we become more and more numb to gun-related tragedies every passing year.

Race Day:

Originally I had the following very rough race plan:

Run conservatively for 3-4 miles; feel like I'm working hard but at a level I feel I could easily maintain for the whole race
Start to push a bit in the second 3-4 miles; stay out of the red zone but let myself pick it up a little
Run as fast as possible in the last three miles (similar to Oakland)

Though I had a plausible time/pace in mind, I didn't want to let it dictate how I ran; especially just having run a pretty fast-for-me half just two weeks ago, I wanted to be sure I was going by effort and didn't blow up toward the end.

Now, we are going to talk more about the race itself but for a moment let us talk about the race *photos*.

At a certain point in my life, I decided "Fuck it, I'm buying the race pictures." Unless they are all terrible. There are so many races from years ago where I'd look at the prices and be like "ARE YOU KIDDING THIS IS EXTORTION" & make do with a couple of poor quality, watermarked screenshots of thumbnails or proofs and now I regret it. I was much poorer then so I completely understand the choice my younger self made, but I still regret it.

Related: Young people, especially young women, do NOT let ANYONE shame you for taking or posting selfies or getting pictures of yourself or asking people to take your picture. DO IT. TAKE THE PICTURES. POST THE PICTURES. Let the haters hate. When I was young and self conscious I remember older people telling me, "Get lots of pictures of yourself/partner/friends/etc. when you're all young and hot. You will of course still be super awesome when you're older but you will still appreciate so much having pictures of your youth to look back on and admire." Well, I see now that they were right, and I wish I had taken/gotten more photos from when I was young and hot. Now that I am middle-aged and hot, I am not wasting a single second more.

Which is all to say, now I usually buy the race pictures. A lot of races now have free pictures which is great. A lot of the time with the others it seems like by the time you pick out 2-3 digital ones, for the price you might as well just pay for the entire digital package. So if there are more than one or two that I like, I just suck it up and pay. This one didn't have a "get all the digital photos" option, but there ended up being a LOT of photos to choose from (if all from only a few different spots), and the cost of the ones I liked best was actually a little cheaper than what it often costs to get them all.

A couple of my favorites were from when my teammate & I went out for a couple of warm-up miles before the race and the photographers were already out there for the 5K (which started early) and caught these:

I know they're from the warm-up because at NO point during the race was I EVER smiling! 🤣)

The 10 mile race was slated for 8:20am, so around 8:10 we headed to the start line (and the extra-special up-front corral guarded by a bouncer, very fancy!). After some timing delays, the race was off and I immediately began the tricky business of trying to run fast enough but not TOO fast, to navigate my way to people running about my pace without getting caught up in all the many, MANY people who were both older than me and also running a lot faster.

Alas, I think I kind of failed. In the first half mile or so I kept seeing like 7:10-7:15 on my watch, and even though it felt comfortable, I knew for a fact that was not in *any* way sustainable and if I didn't slow it down I was going to have a very unpleasant race later. I was able to relax into about 7:25-7:28 after a while, finally, but being honest with myself, I knew that was probably closer to the effort level I'd planned for the middle miles and not the conservative level effort I'd planned to start with.

For the first couple of miles I definitely ended up in kind of a weird three-way tug-of-war with my mind and body that went something like:

"Okay no really, we really need to slow down a bit more, at least for the first few miles, it is not at all clear that we can run this pace the whole way."
"Oh, but this feels fine. Really. Besides, chugging away is easier than trying to slightly slow down. Haha. I could do this for a while. It's not actually that hard. Really."
"Ugh, I feel so tired. Why did I want to race ten miles again? Jogging it in would be fine, right? Or laying down for a nap. That could be fine too."

So, yeah. It was one of those days where I just felt tired and sluggish right off the line, and I knew I was running just a bit too hard, but I was definitely somewhat caught up in the race atmosphere and the fact that it was a masters championship race and and I wanted to do my best for my team, and trying to strategically slow down by just 5-10 seconds per mile felt like soooo much harder than just continuing to grind away at this slightly-too-fast, slightly-too-uncomfortable pace.

Mile 1 -- 7:25
Mile 2 -- 7:33
Mile 3 -- 7:30

I got to the end of mile three and kind of laughed to myself; welp, so much for the plan. There would be no slight picking up of the pace or pushing things just a bit from here; just trying to hang on. My mind kept comparing how I felt vs how effortless things had felt at Oakland and I really had to work to manage the negative thoughts trying to creep in. (Which, in retrospect: Uhhh yes! 7:25-7:30 is harder than 7:40-45! Especially when you ran a hard half just two weeks ago! Smh.)

Oddly, though, it was around the middle of the race that my mind started to settle down. It wasn't that things started to feel any worse; mainly, I think, just the realization setting in that things weren't getting any harder. So my attitude changed to, "Well, this does suck, but I can manage it for another 35-40 minutes or so." I kept thinking I was slowing down a bit, but miraculously, my splits continued to stay pretty even.

Mile 4 -- 7:38
Mile 5 -- 7:29
Mile 6 -- 7:33

I entertained myself, as I often have done mid-race in the past, by mentally listing acts that should be considered war crimes in road races:

🚫Trying to strike up a conversation with someone who is obviously running very, very hard!
🚫Dudes getting miffed and calling you rude for not smiling/laughing/responding pleasantly to their attempts to strike up a conversation when you are obviously running very, very hard
🚫Very loud foot slapping against the pavement, like full-on bug-stomping, simultaneous-full-foot-striking, HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT AND RUNNING FASTER THAN ME??
🚫Audibly moaning in the first half of the race
🚫Audibly carrying sports beans at any point in the race
🚫Spectators yelling YOU GOT THIS to people they don't know
🚫Spectators yelling YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!!! when there is a good 25% of the race (ie a solid 60% of the suffering) left to go

We all have rights but I consider this stuff cruel yet sadly not as unusual as it should be.

One unfortunate thing about all three of my last races was that they all featured a long, exposed out-and-back toward the end. Is this a rule of double-digit road races that start and end at the same spot? I guess it makes sense if you can get a long stretch that doesn't require much traffic control, but as soon as we turned onto this stretch (roughly miles 6-9) I was just like, "Uuuughhhh, this again, BALLS....." It's just so mentally hard, and for some reason these stretches always seem to be placed at the point in the race when you are most ready to just be done. The sun and exposure made it feel a bit tougher here; it wasn't actually that hot (maybe 60F by the finish?) but it was so wide-open and fully sunny that I started to feel overheated and was dumping water over my head at every aid station.

On the return part of the out-and-back, I started to feel truly awful. It's so hard to remember after the fact exactly what you were thinking and feeling at the time, but what I remember is having the strangest feeling that, yes, my body could absolutely keep up this pace and effort level if I asked it to, but...things might go really badly if I did. I was feeling lightheaded and nauseous and having trouble running in a straight line, and though I'd had a gel around mile 6 I started to get legitimately worried about maybe passing out or ending up walking in the last mile. There have been lots of races in the past where the experience has been "I am pushing harder and harder and going slower and slower" but this wasn't that; this was, "I absolutely know I can keep up this pace, but I am legitimately afraid of what might happen to my body if I do." Whether or not that was actually true? Who can say. But anyway I forced myself to slow down a bit so that I could hopefully avoid passing out or barfing or walking the last mile or all of the above.

Mile 7 -- 7:44
Mile 8 -- 7:55

Mile 9 -- 7:57

With one mile to go, a switch flipped in my mind, and I knew I could safely run hard for just one more mile. You could also see the finish line with about half a mile to go, and somehow that just always makes it a bit easier to keep pressing.

Mile 10 -- 7:31

Official: 10 miles / 1:16:45 / 7:41 pace

Garmin: 10.06 miles / 1:16:47 / 7:38 pace

Those reading closely will notice that the official time was ONE second slower than my 10 mile split at Oakland Half! I'd really been hoping to beat that time, but it was not to be; basically, I ran exactly the same pace (on average) that I ran at Oakland. On the one hand, not as fast I hoped I could run here. On the other hand, two weeks is a pretty short turnaround for double-digit races, so I can appreciate it might not have been reasonable to expect to run much faster (and we have already established that I probably went out a touch too fast & maybe paid for it in miles 8-9).

Now, back to pictures. Though I only paid for six, there were several more that were utterly hilarious, just not quite $9-a-pop hilarious, so please enjoy these absolutely amazing screen caps.

I'm not saying funny tongue gymnastics ensure a fast final mile, but I'm also not NOT saying funny tongue gymnastics ensure a fast final mile. 🧐

After Oakland I predicted I would be one of the slowest women in my age group at this race, so I am pretty pleased to report that I came in 20th out of 35, i.e. solidly mid-pack. As a team our finishing places were 5th, 16th, 18th, & 20th, which nabbed us 5th place! (Out of how many teams? Do not ask me, I didn't check and I'm kind of happier not knowing. 🤣)