An Interesting 10K

The last fun run of the season was in the middle of September and I was able to talk my friend Erica into running with me. (My usual running partner was out due to her pregnancy. Geesh Annie, what do you think you want to have a baby for? :-D)

Instead of the 10K Annie did the 5K with her little family. Jaycee ended up winning her age group. You go girl!

Erica and I were neither of us in top shape, but we thought for sure we could do the 10K no problem. We really should have known better, especially when the morning of the run Erica's husband got called in to work. She brought her boys in the running stroller, which for most fun runs wouldn't have been a problem but this one you have to run through the middle of Ross Park. And when I say through, I mean through. The course goes from lower Ross Park to upper Ross Park through the trees and across lots of grass.
If you have ever run with a stroller, you know that this is enough to tucker anybody out. We of course quickly got behind all of the other 10K runners and soon started getting passed up by many of the 5K runners who started shortly behind us. We were still in good spirits though. The course goes in a double loop for the 10K and at the end of the first loop we knew we weren't doing great, but we were still feeling pretty good so we decided to go ahead and do the second lap.

Looking back, that was probably a mistake. Shortly after we started the second loop, having to do the through the trees trek with the stroller again, we started having problems. Erica's boys, who had been doing fantastic, decided that they were done running. We ended up having to stop several times to help them out. Then about half way through that second lap my knees gave out. Now mind you, this was not my IT Band that has been giving me all sorts of trouble, it was aching too, but my other knee became extremely painful. I fought through the rest of the race, but my pace slowed considerably. Eventually Erica ended up leaving me in the dust so that she could finish faster and attend to her screaming children as I limped my way across the finish line.

My time ended up being almost double what my 10K speed had been 2 months previous. Eeeek! While it is sad to say that, I really had a very enjoyable time. The conversation was great during the run and it felt good to have actually run the whole 6 miles. I don't think I would have felt as good about myself if we had stopped on the first loop. An interesting way to end my running season. Plenty of time to recoup and work up to be killer for the next.