1st Win of the Season Comes Early!

It was a late addition to my race schedule and I really didn’t head there thinking of winning, but I managed to come away with the victory at the Have a Heart 10k in Moberly MO this past weekend. I actually haven’t raced many open 10k’s, but since I had done one in February I figured this would be a good opportunity to gauge how my training is progressing. When I got to the starting line, there were only around 20 people lined up and I couldn’t spot any that had that “fast” look to them. I had made sure to study the map but I was relived when a police car showed up to lead the race.

My typical race strategy is to pace off someone about my speed for about two thirds of the race and then pull away if possible, but once the race started I quickly found myself alone heading away from the rest of the runners. So I resolved to running a solo tempo run while being escorted through Moberly by a squad car! One of my goals on the day was to go under 40 minutes, my 10k in February had been 41:49, however, the miles weren’t marked so I had no way of knowing if I was on pace or not. As the time approached 40 minutes, I realized it was going to be close and tried to sprint it in but I had too far to go and ended up running a 40:25. Disappointing to miss it by 25 seconds, but I’m confident I could have run a minute or two faster if I had known my pace or had someone to pace off of.

All in all is was a fun experience and hopefully one that I can build off of. I could get used to running behind a police car like that!