El Paso County 2009 Rescue Run Race Report

It’s 1pm on January 1st, and I’ve already run my first race of 2009!

Yesterday afternoon I heard of a race out in Colorado Springs today, and decided it was a good way to get my miles in. The description sounded lovely:

The 10K course is a combination out-and-back and loop course, and is on paved roads, gravel roads, and dirt trails. The first mile is all uphill, then it is flat to rolling for the next couple of miles. Then there’s another uphill stretch for about a mile. The last mile and a half or so are pretty much all downhill. The views on the 10K course are spectacular, with panoramic views of Pikes Peak and the Front Range mountains.

I had planned to head down to the Springs and run a warmup, do the race at MP, and then do a few more miles to cooldown. However, I didn’t get to bed terribly early and neglected to turn on my alarm, so I got to the race start just in time to register, use the porta-potty and jog to the start line!

Pretty impressive: the race started exactly on time, and the distance was right on!

The weather was nice, I wore a long sleeved shirt and shorts. It was a bit windy at the start, but it seemed to die down as we started.

I will say one thing, a 10K seems like a mighty short race now! It’s very strange to hit two miles and think “a third done!”. Sadly, it didn’t mean I was able to move very quickly.

As I chugged up the first hill, I knew this wasn’t a race to, well, race. So I just focused on getting in the miles. I will admit that several times I asked myself who decided that THIS was a good race for New Year’s Day.. it literally seemed to keep going up and up! (as well, the altitude at the start line was roughly 6400 ft, about 1000 ft higher than where I live) At one point I told myself I wanted to finish in 50 minutes, which I just barely missed (if I had wanted to cruise past that girl just upon entering the finisher’s corral, I totally could have!

I need to learn not to race three weeks out from a marathon, because it inevitably has me doubting myself. I KNOW I can run fast, and today was not an indication of what’s to come. It was just a way to start the year off with other runners…