Nike+ Human Race 10k Post-Mortem

Awwwww babies. What a day.

For whatever reason, sleep just wasn't in the cards last night. It was my last day in San Diego, and even tho I'm running a sleep deficit, I just couldn't catch a wink.

Ah, such is life.

Packed up, shipped out, waited at the airport, flew home to San Francisco, and got ready to run the Nike+ Human Race 10k with @LosBee on our home turf. I initially planned to get in the run in San Diego, but LosBee was up for it so we ran it together.

Exhausted, I was determined to knock it out, and do it faster than I'd 10k'ed before. A lot of folks on Twitter were running, and I was particularly inspired by @Bruno43's first 10k as well as @gdwscott's 18+ mile long run. I was set.

@LosBee had not run more than 2 or 3 mile stretches since finishing the San Francisco Half Marathon about a month ago, so we started off slow together. A little ways in she had to stop and walk a bit, so I picked up the pace after. Nike+ is indicating a much slower time than I think I ran—I'm pretty damn sure, as a matter of fact, that I was hovering above 11min/mile, and coming close to sub-10min/mile. But whatcha gonna do.

The weather was absolutely beautiful out. A nicer day in San Francisco than in San Diego, if you can believe that. Much less humid, and a wee bit cooler. Beautiful day for a run.

I sincerely tried to run negative splits, and tried to put myself in a race mindset. Instead of going as fast as I felt I could, I just tried to ramp it up a bit at each kilometer marker. I notice when I go as fast as I think I can, I still don't have the gas to maintain it over a longer run. It's short-lived. So, I tried to bring it up over time.

By and large it worked. My starting time was much slower than normal, as I was pacing with @LosBee, but once we broke off you can see how I got up to speed and then incrementally ratcheted things up. It was only in the last 1k that I felt pretty gassed, and the last 500 meters were very, very sad. I kept thinking how many times Usain Bolt could have run the 500 meters back and forth as I slowly plodded along.

The Results:

Strollers That Passed Me: 0
Place Overall: 24,419 out of thousands upon thousands
Men: unknown out of thousands upon thousands
Age Grade: unknown
Place: unknown
Finish: 1:09:43
Pace: 11:10

Friggen MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Take that, crappy 3 mile run!