Great job FM. The more you run, the more incredible your results become!
For me, I ran the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta on Friday. It is the largest 10k I think in the world, or at least the U.S. with 60,000 runners. It is also the National 10k championship with a $50,000 prize so pulls many of the elite U.S. runners to it. It was simply an experience like none other that I have had. Nothing like any of the other races that I have done. The sheer enormity of it was mind blowing, and it was just amazing to have thousands of spectators along the entire course. Many were cheering or handing out various homemade pizza, cupcakes, or others were handing out things like beer even. It was like one huge party.
For me, I started way in the back in Wave X, the next to last wave. This was due to being registered without a qualifying time so I was running it with the masses. Every wave had something like 3,000 - 5,000 people in it I would guess, and they started 5 minutes after the previous wave. My hope was to try to make it through my wave and then I was thinking the crowds might thin out some as you get further in the race, making it easier to run....
I was waaaaaay wrong.
What I actually ended up having happen was after getting through one wave of people, I would then hit the previous wave and have to weave my way through those people only to hit the next wave before that. Quite an experience that I've never had before in a race. It actually made most of the race kind of like Nascar where I was constantly looking for holes to move in to so I could pass people.
I figured with the course being alot of up and downs, plus the Atlanta heat, this wasn't going to be a PR performance for me, so I actually just focused on the experience and trying to see how many waves I could catch up to during the race as my goals. What ended up happening though was the weather ended up being surprisingly cool (only about 70 degrees) and pretty easy compared to what I have been running in lately, so was not a factor at all for me.
I found due to the numbers of people, I never really got tired, and it was quite empowering hitting "Cardiac Hill", their version of heartbreak hill, where there were hundreds of people walking up it, and I just chugged up without any real feeling of tiredness at all. That mile was my slowest mile, but I handled the hill at around a 9:30 pace and got over it without feeling any wear at all.
I ended up getting to mile 5 and realized that I was not tired at all and had plenty left in the tank, so I started running alot faster... it was about 1/2 way into that mile that I suddenly heard from behind me some shouting "Meb on your left... Meb coming..." Meb, the winner of the Boston marathon was running this race, but started in the very back with the goal of trying to pass something like 25,000 runners for charity. I happened to be running on the left side too, and looked over and saw Meb coming up really fast to me. I didn't get in his way, but then tried to move in behind him and see how long I could keep up with him. I increased my pace to somewhere around 7:00min/mile and he just left me in the dust. Probably by about 3 minutes later, I could no longer see him
I did finish mile 6 in under 8 minutes though and coasted on in to the finish feeling like I did really great. My watch decided to have issues though from mile 5 on with all kinds of bad data tracks and gave weird times when I first uploaded it. (Some of you saw that it had given me some PRs on many distances, including a 10k PR of 50 minutes). None of that was correct as the data tracks were off.
I ended up re-editing the file, and uploaded a new one tonight, and it looks like it gave me a 10k time of 52:58, which is 5 seconds slower than my 10k PR. Which I find hilarious considering my recent half marathon I ended up 3 seconds behind my PR.
I totally will take it though as I was not expecting a PR anyways on a hilly course in Atlanta during the summer with 60,000 runners!
The official time from the Peachtree road race was 54:33 and I finished 8045 out of 60,000 runners.