Goals for the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler

Just a quickie post before Sunday's 10-miler!

Real talk: I'm nervous. Not as bad (yet) as I was before the 10k (my first race)...but considering I was literally in the tub the night before, crying and saying the totally coherent thought of: "But what if I DO BAD" to Dan over and over before the 10k...it would be pretty hard to match that level of panic.

I just worry that I'm going to embarrass myself or somehow fail to achieve the goals and let other people down. So it is a BIG DEAL that I'm willing to put these out there before the race! My instincts are to keep them private so that I can't feel the public shame, but I think it is important to share both successes and failures in this little running journey of mine. So. Here we are. Be nice if I don't meet them.

My B goal is to finish the race. I will honestly truly be happy if I finish the race (and have fun doing it!)--it is only my second race ever, so finishing is still really exciting. Plus...man, 10 miles is long. This time last year, I was running 2 miles at a time, on the treadmill. Now four miles is an easy day and I'm going to race a 10-miler. Nuts!

That being said...I have finished the 10 mile distance already a few times, and I've put in a good amount of mileage prepping for this race. I feel confident that I can do more than merely finish--it seems reasonable to have a time goal in mind!

So my A goal is finishing under 1:50 (an hour and 50 minutes). This would put me at an 11 min/mi pace, which looking at my recent long run paces, is very doable for me.

My A+ goal...is to finish under/around 1:45. That would put me at a 10:30 pace...which I still think is a quasi-doable pace to shoot for too, based on my recent long runs (10:37-10:50 pace). But this is definitely the A+ goal--all of the race day stars will need to align for this to happen!

Honestly, I think it will come down to A) how much race day adrenaline actually makes a difference and B) how much the lack of hills helps me or hurts me. I am used to running in some fairly hilly neighborhoods for my training runs, and this course is amazingly flat in comparison. This could potentially be a good thing (yay no uphills!), but I'm actually worried that I've gotten too used to using the downhills for recovery and that it could hurt me. So we will see.

So that's what we're working with. My plan is to start with the 10:30 pace group and try to hang on. This might be a stupid plan...so if you have other ideas, please let me know in the comments!