With five months to go before the marathon, me and the Husband signed up for a 10K in our town. Husband has done this race before and loves it.

The 10K did not go well for me. It was high allergy season here in Connecticut and the 10K race itself was small, mostly locals and apparently you don’t run this race unless you run fast.

I’m not a fast runner. Actually, I prefer to describe myself as a jogger. I prefer a nice, easy pace of about 11-12 minutes a mile. In races though, I tend to go a bit faster and was super impressed by last summer’s 10K finish time of 64 minutes. That’s almost a pace of 10 minutes per mile.

So to review…it’s allergy season, I’m not fast, and the race was small. These are important points for you to know. You should also know that we were running a bit behind that morning and returned to the car after registration and heard them call the runners to the starting line while we were at the car. So we jogged to the starting line about a half mile away. (I’ve seen people warm up with little jogs like this, but I don’t. The race itself is enough for me. There’s no reason to add additional mileage that I don’t get credit for!)

Husband and I lined up near the back of the pack with about one minute to rest before the race started. The first mile was fun! Look at me running on the streets of my town!! Traffic was stopped as we ran right down the street we lived on. At about mile one, the 5Kers broke off and ran a different route and suddenly I was alone at the back of the pack. Apparently all of the other “joggers” surrounding me had chosen to race the 5K. But I was still feeling upbeat because as I passed the gentleman keeping time for the race, I was running a 10 minute mile pace (yes, there are real people keeping time. They all seemed to be elderly men dressed in blazers. When runners passed by, they gently told them the time. It was very charming). However, that sense of pride quickly turned into embarrassment when I realized that I was the very LAST person in the race and was being followed closely by a cop car and was holding up traffic.

Isn’t this every runner’s fear? It is certainly mine! When I ran my first race ever, I was extremely concerned about not finishing in the specified amount of time. I pictured a cop with a loudspeaker instructing me to get off the road because the race was over. (This didn’t happen). I have read countless articles about racing where the author assures you that it is very unlikely that you will be the last to finish because there are usually walkers. Well, not in my town. In my town, you must run faster than a 10 minute mile pace to have the audacity to enter!

Needless to say, when I realized I was holding up traffic, I turned up the speed a bit. There was only about a half mile before we turned off the main road, so I was thinking I could take it a bit easier after the turn. Then the turn came and so did a hill. I drive up this hill every day to drop the 6 year old off at school and it’s not much of a hill in a car. On foot, it’s a pretty big hill and it goes on long beyond where the turnoff to school is. Husband and I both felt this was the hardest part of the race.

At about mile 2, I had to walk. There were three runners in sight and they all looked winded from the hill too, but I was the only one to stop and walk. Soon we entered the Game Refuge – a wilderness protected area – and I picked up some speed on a few downhills (running downhill on steep rocky slopes were totally my strength in this race. I nailed the downhills. I was doing some serious ninja moves. Had there been photos taken at that point in the race, you would have seen a giant smile on my face).

The Game Refuge went on much longer than expected. It’s a pretty common walking place for my family unit and the dog, so the surroundings kept looking familiar and I was expecting any minute to round the last bend. Then the bend would come and it would just be more woods in front of me.

When I finally did make it to a point I recognized, I was better able to gauge how much race was left and turned on the speed to pass the one person I was running close to for most of the race. I passed someone!! Go me!!! Then we were back on the main road. I tried to give a cop a high five as I passed but this made him think I was about to run head on into traffic and he started screaming at me (out of fear for my safety. I totally appreciate the police in my town looking out for my safety during this race, but they were giving me no love).

I had another racer in my sights for the rest of the race, but I could never catch up to pass them.

The best part of the race was the sheer joy on my son’s face when he saw me coming towards the finish line. He was super excited for me. (Or he was totally excited because this meant he finally got to leave because I was the last person to finish and the party was totally over by the time I got there).

The results show me beating three others but still not jazzed about that. Overall, it was a pretty demoralizing experience. I only finished about 6 minutes slower than my last 10K race, but the other race was much bigger and I was solidly in the middle of the pack.

Felt depressed about the race through much of the weekend, but the following week I had resolved to do better and was more excited about running longer and faster again.