Crescent City Classic 10k

Today was the big day! Chris and Jackie walked me to the start line. They had us (the orange numbers) back so far, I decided to move up. I got pretty close to the start. In fact, I crossed the start line about 1:15 after the gun. On the shuttles back I overheard people talking who crossed the start line almost an HOUR after the gun! I chose wisely. Although in the general scheme of things, we had chips, so it really didn't matter. The only thing it counted for was your overall place was computed based on gun time.

I forgot to turn the auto-lap feature on the Garmin back on, so I don't have any mile splits. I will take a look at the download and see if I can figure out the times at the miles, but the bottom line is I ran 6.29 miles in 1:01:15.

I'm not completely happy with this result. I am thrilled that I made a new PR (by 20 seconds), but I am extremely frustrated and dissatisfied with my performance. I've been in a funk all afternoon. Granted, part of the funk is due to the fact that my phone had NO service at City Park and I only got to talk to Bill for about two seconds. He even called and left a message. The phone never rang. I was mad at AT&T because I really needed to hear him tell me that I did well and that I should be proud of this effort and not disappointed. Granted, there were 22,000 runners today. I should be thrilled to have done that well!

HOLD THE PRESSES! I just checked the official results! They only have the first 17,000 finishers online, but here are my stats:

Place Name    Gender Age Place                   Gun Time Chip Time Pace
2785 Molly Evans F     39    Pensacola FL USA 1:02:27   1:01:08      9:52

I feel great now! I finished in the top 15%! Or at least in the top 20%, depending on how many people actually finished. That really makes me realize just how goofy I've been for the past five hours.

Now, I really did think I had it in me to break an hour. I thought with Tuesday's great 5k, I was prepared. There were a lot of people there, and I probably lost some time in the first mile, just trying to get out there. Next Saturday there will probably only be about 600 people competing, so that should not be quite a limiting factor. I should be able to perform better with fewer people to hurdle.

So, even though I think I should have done better, I'm still happy with how I did. I'm done stewing and I am going to celebrate. I mean, it is kind of dumb to be mad at a performance that ended in a PR. A PR by 27 seconds! Next week I will train and I will be mentally in the game next weekend. Besides, it was a really fun run today. Where else do you have beer stops and margarita stops and jello shots being handed out with the water at the water stops? Only in New Orleans!