Today was the big day for the Nike+ 10k. I had originally planned on running it this morning, but having imbibed a little too much last night, I wasn't really feeling my best when I woke up. As a matter of fact, I felt kind of "off" the entire day. I'm not really sure what it was, but I actually considered bailing on the race.

We went to my parent's house this afternoon for some Labor Day festivities meaning I didn't get out for my run until about 9pm. And of course I made the brilliant race day decision to have about 20 hot wings for dinner!

Why yes, that IS a vat of hot grease burning a hole in my stomach! So kind of you to notice.

So after putting it off for about as long as I possibly could, I headed out the door, did a quick warm-up jog and started my race.

My goal was 50 minutes, so I knew I'd have to hit 5:00 per kilometer. I went out pretty fast and felt alright, but right around 2.5 miles I hit a big hill and the pace slowed to about 5:30 per km. Things stayed right around there for pretty much the rest of the race, or until the last mile or so. I was able to pick things up at the end for an official time of 52:18. (No, I still haven't calibrated my Nike+)

When I got home and mapped out my route on mapmyrun.com, it came out to about 6.8 miles, which comes out to a 7:40 pace which would've been good for a 47:43 10k! Either way, I'm happy with my result, and really just happy that I finished it!

In preparation for Sunday's Nike+ Human Race, I thought I'd go out tonight and give my planned 10k course a test drive. I've never raced a distance longer than 5k, so I wanted to try and see how I would feel keeping the pace around 8:15 - 8:30, which would be pretty close to my anticipated race pace.

It was around 75 degrees with low humidity by the time I started around 8:30pm. Surprisingly enough, my legs felt pretty fresh after yesterday's 9-miler. I was worried that my Achilles would start bothering me again, or my quads would feel dead, but overall everything felt really good!

I started out the first mile pretty conservatively just to get the legs warmed up but picked up the pace for miles 2 and 3 because that part of the route is fairly flat, and I knew I had a couple miles of hills (both up and down) coming up that could (WOULD) slow me down.

I managed to keep the pace pretty steady through the toughest part of the course and had enough left for the last mile and a half, which is mostly downhill or flat! I ended up finishing in 48:38, which is way faster than my goal of 50:00 so I'm pretty confident going into Sunday.

However, I face the Nike+ dilemma in that my Plus is STILL not reporting distances properly. For example, it reported tonight's run as 5.52 miles. So, I decided that if I'm not able to get the thing properly calibrated before Sunday, I'll run the 10k according to the Nike+ even though that will give me a slower time. I think that's the only way I can really participate anyway. Oh well!

I have one more short run planned for this week and then I'm going to take Friday and Saturday off from running to rest up for the race. It should be a fun one, even if I'm running it alone!

We're 10 days away from the Nike+ Human Race and I'm starting to think about my goals for the race. This is my first 10k, and even though I'll only be racing against the clock, it's nice to have something to shoot for.

First things first, sometime in the next 10 days I need to calibrate my Nike+, otherwise I'll have no hope of reaching my goal. In addition, I have to plot out my course. There are a lot of hills around here, and while I know I won't be able to avoid them entirely, I'd like to try and find something that's not all uphill (both ways...in the snow...with no shoes!!).

Ever since switching to Genny Light (which I'm now calling Genny "Light"-ning In A Can), my training runs have sped up. The last two, around 5 & 6 miles each, were run at around an 8:10/mile pace. I was pushing the pace during them, but I wasn't totally dead at the end so I think I can do better in "race" conditions. So my goal for the 10k is 50:00 or under, which works out to an 8:02/mile pace.

I'll admit, one reason I'm shooting for 50 minutes is 50 is a nice round number to hit, but the real truth is that I noticed on Viper's Booze Hounds Inc blog that 50 minutes was his 10k goal a few weeks back and I want to beat him! Sure, he drinks better beer than I do, but maybe, just maybe, I could beat him in a race to the beer store!