Last year when I ran this San Diego Track Club sponsored race, I lined up at the start line with some older folks. I immediately felt sorry for them, thinking that I was going to smoke them. When the race started, these 50 and 60-year olds left me in the dust, some of them finishing 15 minutes faster than I did. Well this year I was not fooled at all.

I put last year out of my mind, determined to run my own race at my own pace. My goal was 0:44:59. In order to finish the 10k race in under 45 minutes, I knew I would have to run close to a 7:00 minute/mile pace. I planned to do the first 5k of the race at about 7:10, and then to speed up for the second half to about 7:05 or 7:00.

Before the race I did a little 10-minute warm-up jog. At Fiesta Island you don’t have much of a choice of where you run considering it’s just a small island with one main circular road. After my warm-up the Open Division started, and I knew my event (Master’s) would be starting in about half an hour. As I lined up at the start line I saw the familiar faces from last year, the older, veteran runners from the San Diego Track Club. I blocked them out of my mind and thought only about the pace I needed to run. Despite the cold weather, I felt good, energetic yet relaxed.

The race started and I let all the old folks pass me, sticking to my plan and maintaining a pace of 7:10. Really the first four miles were kinda boring. I did bring my iPod and just listened to music and thought about stuff, what specifically, I cannot remember for the life of me. There was a woman who was running at about the same pace as me, so I decided to pace against her. It was kind of annoying at first since we ran side by side for four miles. But I got used to it. At first, she would try to speed up and go faster than me, but I stayed with her. After awhile, I guess she gave up because we pretty much ran together for most of the race.

After the first 5k, I tried to speed up a tad, but decided against it. I felt it would take too much energy out of me. So fortunately, I felt fine in maintaining the 7:10 pace. At mile four, I noticed that a couple of runners who had remained in front of me for the whole race had slowed down slightly. I even lost the pace woman somewhere in the middle of the fourth mile.

By the time I reached the last mile of the race, I was waiting for that “wall” to hit. The “wall” is what I call that physical feeling that I typically get when my lungs and legs scream “NO!”, and then I have to slow down. The weird thing is, the “wall” never came.

There was a husky, heavier guy who was ahead of me for the whole race, but by mile 5 I knew I’d be passing him soon since I never did hit the “wall”. As I turned around the final bend towards the finish with about 0.6 miles remaining, I decided to begin a gradual sprint. I passed the big dude. With about 0.3 miles remaining, I passed someone else. As I passed him, I could hear his feet picking up speed, and I knew he didn’t like that I had passed him especially with the finish line in sight. So I stepped it up to a full-on sprint.

After the race, I enjoyed some post-race treats and drinks. The one dude that I passed before the finish line told me afterwards that he tried to catch me but couldn’t. I thought that was cool. After changing, I went back to the finish line to check on my results: 0:44:09. I finished 25th overall. If I had raced in the Open division, I would have finished 18th. Go figure. Anyways, I thought that 25th was definitely not good enough to win anything, so after calling Maria and letting her know the results, I decided to leave.

As I approached the exit to the island, I decided to turn around and go back to the finish line to check the results one more time. I had realized that even though I finished 25th, those were the overall results. I had not really paid attention to how I did in comparison to my age group. It’s a good thing I went back because when I checked the results board, I discovered that I placed 1st in my AG. So I headed over to the awards ceremony gathering and collected a cool (but cheap-looking) plaque. Seriously, I would just rather have … yeah, that’s right … a cheap, plastic medal.

Overall, I’m very pleased. I set another PR for the 10k distance and won my age group yet again. Weird. But I definitely can get used to winning.