Sunday, August 28, 2011

Toronto Women’s 10K

Today marks 1 year since my first 5K and yesterday, I ran my second 10K.
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The race kit consisted of the usual flyers, a luna bar and the brightest yellow t-shirt.
I got to the park just after 7. Race time was 8. Had a good amount of time to drink some water, visit the porta potties repeatedly and get ready.
The 10K was divided up better than May’s 5K. I positioned myself in the 60 minutes + group but once we started, it was clear that some there were some people who should have been in faster starting positions. Bit annoying. Also, I saw a couple of 5K people turning around and heading back so they started at the wrong time (5K’s started 15 minutes earlier). The announcements were pretty clear – if you have a yellow bib, get out of the starting line. That really sucks though for them. I’d be very annoyed at myself if I had started at the wrong time and already run half the race.
The 10K course starts off following the usual TO Women’s 5K course which after 3 times running it, I’m pretty familiar with. Than we turn off and run through part of the park that I hadn’t seen before. It was very pretty – over little bridges and along streams. Over to the expressway. Up a hill, down a hill (stupid hills).
I felt good throughout the entire race. I was doing 2:30/1:30 run/walk intervals and kept pretty much dead on my 8 min/km pace throughout the race. That was one of my main problems with the Sporting Life 10K – I went out too fast than struggled later. There were 3 water stops along the way plus I had my fuel belt and some sport beans. I was at the back, but wasn’t concerned about it. I was running the race that I wanted to run and feeling good.
My husband came out to the park to see me finish and he was about 50 metres ahead of the finish line. I was very happy to see him!
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I had enough energy left at the end to pick up the pace and finished strong.
Official Time: 1 hr 20m 22s
Chip Time: 1hr 19m 50s
So I beat my Sporting Life 10K time by 48 seconds which I am very happy amount. 1hr 20 minutes was my goal, and I’m 10 seconds under it. I felt good covering the longer distance which makes me feel better about October’s half marathon. And I got a medal and a shirt! Yay for swag!!

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Things I liked about this race:
  • Course was pretty
  • Shirt & medal
  • 3 water stations
  • The volunteers were great – really supportive and encouraging.
  • Post race food – bananas, breakfast pita, chocolate bar, water and bag of chips
  • General energy of the racers. I like women’s races.
Things I didn’t like:
  • People not positioning themselves properly at start
  • There’s a parking lot that we run through at the beginning and end of the race. I hate that parking lot for some reason. Rest of the course is fine.
  • Course is open to the public which worked out fine but is a bit annoying.

1 comment:

  1. I didn't care for the parking lot either. I couldn't say why - it was just a little weird. The rest of the 5k course was great. I loved the volunteers as well.

    I noticed quite a few people on the course just using the paths, including cyclists. I was a little annoyed by them. I realize the park and the course is open to the public during the race, but if I was part of the public I think I would stay away because that's what I would want.

    Another thought that I didn't put on my race report (on my blog) was that the parking situation was much better than I thought it would be. Very well organized making sure people kept moving to the next available spot.

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