Monday, October 22, 2007
Uptown Classic 10K Race
Wow, it's been a whole year since my last post. Time flies when you procrastinate ;)
Yesterday I participated in the 2007 IBM Uptown Classic 10K race with a couple friends from church. I did it mainly to give me an incentive to get regular exercise for the weeks leading up to the race. This is the first time I've raced more than 5K, and even that I only did my freshman year in high school (12 years ago). When they announced the schedule for the race, they said the race would start at 8:00 am and the awards ceremony would be at 9:10 am, so I made it my goal to finish before the awards ceremony (ie. run the race in at most 1:10:00). As it turns out, I was able to keep up with Alyson (one of the friends from church) and finished in 0:55:09! We would probably have finished a minute or so faster had there not been so many people in front of us at the start (the first mile took us 9:33, and we averaged 8:45/mile for the rest of the race). I felt pretty good the first couple hours after the race, but unfortunately my stomach didn't want to digest anything for the rest of the day.
There were some unexpected things I noticed during the race. Running uphill really tired me out, enough that if I hadn't had someone to keep me going I would have walked for a while after the uphills. But once I got my breath back, I was fine running the rest of the way. At the end, I felt like I could probably go a couple more *flat* miles before really getting tired, which I didn't expect. Also unexpected was my ability to sprint the last 100m or so. It seems that having run 6 miles doesn't decrease my ability to sprint at all, as long as I'm not winded when I start. I suspect that all my years of playing DDR have trained my body to be able to move my legs quickly for about a 45 seconds to a minute while I don't get much breath. I say this because I discovered about a month ago that I don't breath much while playing DDR.
I and those I ran with all seemed to enjoy the race, but that was not the case for everyone who ran. This race was the first of the six races in the Austin Distance Challenge, which culminates with the AT&T Austin Marathon in Feb. As it turns out, one of the barriers on the course was ambiguously placed, and as a result about the first 200 people (of about 3000) went the wrong way at one of the turns. Due to this mishap, the results of the race aren't being counted for the Distance Challenge (the winner of the challenge is the person with the best combined time from all the races) and everyone who started the race is allowed to take part in the rest of the challenge. One of the runners at work told me today that there were a number of runners who quit and didn't finish when they discovered that they'd run the wrong way. After all, what's the point in finishing the race if your time is going to be invalid (and thus you don't have any chance of beating your personal record)?
All in all I thought it was fun, and will probably run it again next year.
Yesterday I participated in the 2007 IBM Uptown Classic 10K race with a couple friends from church. I did it mainly to give me an incentive to get regular exercise for the weeks leading up to the race. This is the first time I've raced more than 5K, and even that I only did my freshman year in high school (12 years ago). When they announced the schedule for the race, they said the race would start at 8:00 am and the awards ceremony would be at 9:10 am, so I made it my goal to finish before the awards ceremony (ie. run the race in at most 1:10:00). As it turns out, I was able to keep up with Alyson (one of the friends from church) and finished in 0:55:09! We would probably have finished a minute or so faster had there not been so many people in front of us at the start (the first mile took us 9:33, and we averaged 8:45/mile for the rest of the race). I felt pretty good the first couple hours after the race, but unfortunately my stomach didn't want to digest anything for the rest of the day.
There were some unexpected things I noticed during the race. Running uphill really tired me out, enough that if I hadn't had someone to keep me going I would have walked for a while after the uphills. But once I got my breath back, I was fine running the rest of the way. At the end, I felt like I could probably go a couple more *flat* miles before really getting tired, which I didn't expect. Also unexpected was my ability to sprint the last 100m or so. It seems that having run 6 miles doesn't decrease my ability to sprint at all, as long as I'm not winded when I start. I suspect that all my years of playing DDR have trained my body to be able to move my legs quickly for about a 45 seconds to a minute while I don't get much breath. I say this because I discovered about a month ago that I don't breath much while playing DDR.
I and those I ran with all seemed to enjoy the race, but that was not the case for everyone who ran. This race was the first of the six races in the Austin Distance Challenge, which culminates with the AT&T Austin Marathon in Feb. As it turns out, one of the barriers on the course was ambiguously placed, and as a result about the first 200 people (of about 3000) went the wrong way at one of the turns. Due to this mishap, the results of the race aren't being counted for the Distance Challenge (the winner of the challenge is the person with the best combined time from all the races) and everyone who started the race is allowed to take part in the rest of the challenge. One of the runners at work told me today that there were a number of runners who quit and didn't finish when they discovered that they'd run the wrong way. After all, what's the point in finishing the race if your time is going to be invalid (and thus you don't have any chance of beating your personal record)?
All in all I thought it was fun, and will probably run it again next year.
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