Reflections from an under-trained 10K

This morning I ran the 10K race at Albuquerque Half Marathon's.  I went in horribly under-trained as my knee has been bothering me, and I didn't expect it to go very well.

Actually, I started with a goal of not having it be a personal worst, but that wasn't much of a goal. My running partner and I and decided to make this a training run in which we would try to hit a 10:30 pace, which gave us 1:05:00 as a target. I've been running most of my training runs at about an 11:15 pace lately, so that seemed a bit aggressive under the circumstances.

Look!  They put our names on the bibs.  Cool.

But, of course, sometimes things go better than expected.  Thanks to a cooperating knee, the excitement of the other runners, a nice flat course, and a beautiful calm morning, we ended up running much closer to a 10:00 pace.  My finish time ended up being 1:02:17, about a 10:02 average pace.  She was about 9 seconds in front of me.  Husband finished in 53-something.  I know that I was 5th in my AG (F45-49), but I don't know how many people there were.  All-in-all, I am quite pleased.

The photo from her phone!

I got to briefly meet a fellow blogger. (Just) Trying is for Little Girls was running the half-marathon in her quest for the 50 states.  I really hoped to have time to chat before the race, but wasn't able to locate her until a few minutes before her race started, so our meet-up ended up being only about 30 seconds long. She has photo evidence of the meet-up on her phone.  Hopefully she'll post it on her race report.  For now, you'll just have to take my word for it.  

Updated:  Added the photo from her phone.  Hope she doesn't mind!  My number is on my leg because I wanted to take off the long sleeves before my race started.  The car was too far away to stash it there, so I ended up running with it tied around my waist. 

Also, the results are posted and I now know that I was 5 of 8 women in my age group.  99 of 184 overall runners for the 10K

One more update:  I saw a friend/colleague who ran in Boston last week at the finish line cheering us and others on like he often does.  For some reason though, he had decided to go back to his hotel and clean up right after his race ended on Monday and wasn't hanging around the finish line  when the explosions happened. Anyway, he said that he plans on running Boston again next year if he can get in because he won't let terror win.  I'm not sure I would be so brave.   

Next up for me is Run for the Zoo 10K in two weeks.